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-4 



WORK AND PLAY; 



OR 



LITERARY VARIETIES 



BY 



HORACE^BUSHNELL 



CCpYRiGHT"'^^ 




NEW YOEK: 
CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND ST. 



9/1- 



1864 



No, 2.1 , - . / 



T5/2.3f 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, 

By CHAELES SCRIBNER, 
In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York. 



A^ ^ 3 



1 



JOHN F. TROW, 

PEIXTEB, STEREOTTPER, AVD ELECTROTTPEB, 

46 & 50 Greene Street, 

New Tort 



n 



^fV 



I.' *" 



ADVERTISEMENT 



At the suggestion of a friend, who is himself an author, I 
have named this volume from its first article ; partly because 
it must have a name, and partly because the matter of it rep- 
resents the spontaneous overplus and literary by-play, of a la- 
borious profession. 

A good many of the articles it contains have been pub- 
lished before in the pamphlet form ; and the frequent letters 
I receive, requesting copies, when they are no longer to be 
had, have suggested, in fact, this republication of them in a 
more permanent shape. It will not be amiss that articles are 
inserted, which have not before been published. 

As the contributions of the volume represent opinions and 
impressions that belong to dates, or periods of life, widely 
separated, no exact consistency of view will be expected or 
demanded. 

In the article on " The Growth of Law," a reflection more 
severe by implication than by statement, is cast upon those 
reformers who have it for a point of endeavor, to show that 
slavery was not permitted in the ancient Scriptures. I con- 
fess that my impressions are somewhat modified by the late 
argument of my friend Dr. J. P. Thompson. At the same 

1^ 



VI ADVERTISEMENT. 

time, I do not see that any thing really decisive is depending 
on that question. Doubtless it is all the better if slavery can 
get no complexion of favor from the Scripture usage, yet still 
it is quite well even if it can. If there is, by God's appoint- 
ment, and is always to be, a progress in law, nothing more is 
wanted for its final condemnation, than to show that the day 
of it is now gone by, and a state is reached, in which the 
world is capable of better things. And if it can be shown 
that Christianity itself expects, and deliberately prepares, just 
this kind of advancement in the social capability of mankind, 
slavery is then just as truly ruled out by the Scripture, as if 
it were specifically condemned. The ground which I took in 
this arttcle, twenty years ago, coincides exactly, it will be 
seen, with the very able, and more strictly Scriptural, argu- 
ment of Prof. Goldwin Smith, just now published. But if it 
should turn out that we are all in a mistake in our argu- 
ments, I think it will be discovered, ere long, that God has a 
way of uprooting slavery that is Providentially right. 

H. B. 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 

Advertisement, , 5 

Contents, t 

I.— Work and Play, 9 

II.— The True Wealth or Weal of Nations, 43 

III.— The Growth of Law, 18 

lY. — The Founders Great in their Unconsciousness, 124 

Y. — Historical Estimate of Connecticut, IQl 

YI.— Agriculture at the East, 227 

YIL— Life, or the Lives, ; 262 

YIIL— City Plans, 308 

IX.— The Doctrine of Loyalty, 337 

X. — The Age of Homespun, 368 

XL— The Day of Eoads, 403 

XII. — Religious Music, 440 



I. 

¥ORK AND PLAY.* 



Mr. President, and Brethren of the Society, — 

There are many subjects or truths, and sometimes 
those of the greatest moment, whicli can not well be 
formally announced. They require to be offered rather 
by suggestion. They will enter the mind and be in it 
only as they are of it, generated by the fertile activity 
of a meditative spirit. This is frequently true even in 
matters of scientific discovery, where also it is often 
remarked, that the best suggestives are the humblest 
instances ; such as the mind can play itself upon with 
the greatest facility, because it is not occupied by their 
magnitude or oppressed by their gTandeur. Some 
lamp is seen swinging on its chain, some apple Mling 
from the tree, and then, perchance, the thoughtful 
looker-on, taking the hint that nature gives, will be 
able also to look in ; thus to uncover truths not meas- 
ured by their instances, — laws of the universe. 

More true is this, if possible, of moral subjects ; for 
there are many of these which the soul will not suffer 
to be thrust upon her. She must ask for them, catch 

* Delivered as an Oration before the Society of tlie Phi Beta Kappa, in 
the University of Cambridge. August 24, 1848. 



10 WORK AND PLAY. 

the note of them in some humble suggestive, entertain 
them thoughtfully, take them into her feeling, and 
there, encouraging, as it were, their modesty, tempt 
them to speak. So especially it is with the subject in 
which I desire to engage you on the present occasion. 
No formal announcement will probably do more for it, 
than just to thrust it on your disrespect. 

Let me call to my aid, then, some thoughtful spirit 
in my audience ; not a poet, of necessity, or a man of 
genius, but a man of large meditation, one who is ac- 
customed to observe, and, by virtue of the warm affini- 
ties of a living heart, to draw out the meanings that 
are hid so often in the humblest things. Eeturning 
into the bosom of his family, in some interval of care 
and labor, he shall come upon the very unclassic and 
certainly unimposing scene, — his children and a kitten 
playing on the floor together; and just there, possibly, 
shall meet him suesrestions more fresh, and thousrhts of 
higher reach concerning himself and his race, than the 
announcement of a new-discovered planet, or the revo- 
lution of an empire would incite. He surveys, with a 
meditative feeling, this beautiful scene of muscular 
play, — the unconscious activity, the exuberant life, the 
spirit of glee, — and there rises in his heart the concep- 
tion, that possibly he is here to see the prophecy or 
symbol of another and higher kind of play, which is 
the noblest exercise and last end of man himself. 
Worn by the toils of years, perceiving, with a sigh, that 
the unconscious joy of motion here displayed is spent 



WORK AND FLAT. 11 

ia himself, and that now he is effectually tamed to the 
doom of a working creature, he may yet discover, in 
the lively sympathy with play that bathes his inward 
feeling, that his soul is playing now, — enjoying, with- 
out the motions, all it could do in them ; manifold more 
than it could, if he were down upon the floor himself, 
in the unconscious activity and lively frolic of child- 
hood. Saddened he may be to note how time and work 
have changed his spirit and dried away the playful 
springs of animal life in his being ; yet he will find, or 
ought, a joy playing internally over the face of his 
working nature, which is fuller and richer as it is more 
tranquil ; which is to the other as fulfillment to proph- 
ecy, and is, in fact, the prophecy of a better and far 
more glorious fulfillment still. 

Having struck, in this manner, the great world-prob- 
lem of WORK AND PLAY, his thoughts kindle under the 
theme and he pursues it. The living races are seen, at 
a glance, to be offering in their history, everywhere, a 
faithful type of his own. They show him what he 
himself is doing and preparing, — all that he finds in the 
manifold experience of his own higher life. They 
have, all, their gambols, all, their sober cares and la- 
bors. The lambs are sporting on the green knoll ; the 
anxious dams are bleating to recall them to their side. 
The citizen beaver is building his house by a laborious 
carpentry ; the squirrel is lifting his sail to the wind on 
the swinging top of the tree. In the music of the morn.- 
iug, lie hears the birds playing with their voicos, and. 



12 WORK AND PLAT. 

wlien the day is up, sees them sailing round in circles 
on the upper air, as skaters on a lake, folding their 
wings, dropping and rebounding, as if to see wha^ sport 
they can make of the solemn laws that hold the upper 
and lower worlds together. And yet these play-chil- 
dren of the air he sees again descending to be carriers 
and drudges ; fluttering and screaming anxiously about 
their nest, and confessing by that sign that not even 
wings can bear them clear of the stern doom of work. 
Or passing to some quiet shade, meditating still on this 
careworn life, playing still internally with ideal fancies 
and desires unrealized, there returns upon him there, in 
the manifold and spontaneous mimicry of nature, a liv- 
ing show of all that is transpiring in his own bosom; 
in every flower, some bee humming over his laborious 
chemistry and loading his body with the fruits of his 
toil ; in the slant sunbeam, populous nations of motes 
quivering with animated joy, and catching, as in play, 
at the golden particles of the light with their tiny fin- 
gers. Work and play, in short, are the universal ordi- 
nance of God for the living races ; in which they sym- 
bolize the fortune and interpret the errand of man. iS"o 
creature lives that must not work and may not play. 

Returning now to himself and to man, and meditat- 
ing yet more deeply, as he is thus prepared to do, on 
work and play, and play and work, as blended in the 
compound of our human life ; asking again what is work 
and what is play, what are the relations of one to the 
other, and which is the final end of all, he discovers, in 
what he was observing round him, a sublimity of im- 



WOBK AND PLAY. 13 

port, a solemnity even, that is deep as the shadow of 
eternity. 

To proceed intelligently with our subject, we need, 
first of all, to resolve or set forth the precise philo- 
sophic distinction between work and play ; for upon 
this distinction all our illustrations will depend. That, 
in practical life, we have any hesitancy in making the 
distinction, I by no means intimate. At least, there are 
many youths in the universities, not specially advanced 
in philosophy, who. are able to make their election with 
the greatest facility, be the distinction itself clear or not. 
But as I propose, on the present occasion, to speak of 
the state of play in a manner that involves a philo- 
sophic extension of the idea, I am required to distin- 
guish the idea by a careful analysis. 

You will discover, at once, that work and play, taken 
as modes of mere outward, muscular activity, can not 
be distinguished. There is motion in both, there is an 
exercise of force in both, both are under the will as act- 
ing on the muscular system ; so that, taken outwardly, 
they both fall into the same category. Indeed, they 
can not be discriminated till we pass within, to view 
them metaphysically, considering their springs of ac- 
tion, their impulse, aim, and object. 

Here the distinction becomes evident at once ; name- 
ly, that work is activity for an end ; play, activity as 
an end. One prepares the fund or resources of enjoy- 
ment, the other is enjoyment itself Thus, when a man 
goes into agriculture, trade, or the shop, he consents to 

2 



14 WORK AND PLlY. 

undergo a certain expenditure of care and labor, wliicli 
is only a form of painstaking riglitly named, in order to 
obtain some ulterior good wliicli is to be liis reward. 
But when the child goes to his play, it is no painstak- 
ing, no means to an end ; it is itself rather both end and 
joy. Accordingly, it is a part of the distinction I state, 
that work suffers a feeling of aversion, and play ex- 
cludes aversion. For the moment any play becomes 
wearisome or distasteful, then it is work ; an activity 
that is kept up, not as being its own joy^ but for some 
ulterior end, or under some kind of constraint. 

Another form of the distinction is made out, and one 
that is more accurately adapted to philosophic uses, by 
saying that work is done by a conscious effort of will, 
and that play is impulsive, having its spring in some in- 
spiration, or some exuberant fund of life back of the 
will. So that one is something which we require of 
ourselves, the other something that we must control 
ourselves not to do. We work because we must, be- 
cause prudence impels. We play because we have in 
us a fund of life that wants to expend itself 

But man is not a muscular creature only; he does 
not consist of mere bones and integuments. He is a 
creature also of thought, feeling, intelligence, and char- 
acter. And what we see of him in the muscular life 
he is, or should be, in the higher domain of spirit. 
Kegarding the child as a creature full of life and spon- 
taneous motion, thus and therefore a playing creature, 
we are to see in him, not the measure, but the sign, of 
that which shall be. For as the race began with an 



WORK AXD PLAY. 15 

outward paradise, which, being lost, may yet offer the 
type of a higher paradise to be gained, so each life be- 
gins with muscular play, that, passing through the hard 
struggles of work, it may carry its ideal with it, and 
emerge, at last, into a state of inspired liberty and spon- 
taneous beauty. In short, we are to conceive that the 
highest and complete state of man, that which his na- 
ture endeavors after and in which only it fulfills its sub- 
lime instinct, is the state of play. 

In this view, study is to be regarded as work, until 
the disciple gets beyond voluntary attention, application 
constrained by prudence, rivalry, ambitious prepara- 
tions for life, and begins to dwell in beauty and truth 
as inspirations. For then he passes into another and 
more perfect kind of activity, an activity that is spon- 
taneous or impulsive, and is to itself both reward and 
end. 

And this kind of activity, call it enthusiastic or in- 
spired, or by whatever name, we shall discover is com- 
monly regarded as a higher and nobler — ^in fact the 
only perfect acti\T.ty conceivable. In the article of 
memory, for example, we regard a spontaneous mem- 
ory, that which mirrors all the past before us without 
any effort of recollection, as the only perfect memory. 
But a reflective memory, supported by mnemonic con- 
trivances, and assisted by recollective efforts, is so far in 
the nature of work ; and the necessity of work argues 
the imperfection of the instrument. Our idea of a per- 
fect or complete memory is, that it reports the past 
spontaneously, or in play. 



16 ttork: and play. 

When we ascend to the higher modes of action^ such 
as involve the inventive exercises of reason, fancy, im- 
agination, or the sentimental exercises of feeling, pas- 
sion, humor, we find that we are even offended by the 
signs of work ; or, if not offended, we are unsatisfied, 
jnst in proportion to the evidence of work or effort ob- 
truded on our attention. For work, we allow, argues 
defect or insufficiency, and to say that the man lahors is 
the same as to say that he fails. Xothing is sufficient 
or great, nothing fires or exalts us, but to feel the divine 
energy and the inspiring liberty of play. 

Then, again, as we ascend still higher, to modes of 
activity that are moral and religious, we become quite 
intolerant of anv thinsr in the nature of work. To be 
good or true, for the sake of some ulterior end, is the 
same as to value goodness and truth second to that end; 
which is the same as to have no sense of either. So, if 
some benefit or gift is bestowed upon us by constraint, 
and not from any compassion for our lot or interest in 
our welfare, we deem the gift itself an insult, and call 
the charity hvpocrisy. In like manner purity, forced 
by self-restraint or maintained by mere prudence, argues 
impurity. True purity, that which answers the perfect 
ideal, is spontaneous; unfolding its artless, unaftected 
spotlessness in the natural freedom of a flower. It 
could not defile itself without an effort. Nay, it is sup- 
posable that perfect purity could not even blush. In 
like manner, self-denial is never a complete virtue till it 
becomes a kind of self-indulgence. It must bathe itself 
in the fountains of a self-oblivious charity. Forgetting 



WORK AND PLAY. 17 

feme and reward, rising above the constraints of pru- 
dence, and losing tlie nature of work, it must become 
tlie spontaneous impulse of our being, a joyous overflow 
of the soul's liberty. 

It follows, in this view, that work is in its very na- 
ture temporary, or should be, having for its end the 
realization of a state of play. Passing through activity 
for an end, we are to come into activity as an end ; be- 
yond which, of course, there is nothing higher. As we 
rest in the one, we are to cease from the other. And 
might we not have said as much beforehand? Who 
that considers the ethereal nature of a soul can conceive 
that the doom of work is any thing more than a tempo- 
rary expedient, introduced or suffered to perfect our 
discipline? To imagine a human creature dragged 
along, or dragging himslf along, under the perpetual 
friction of work, never to ascend above it ; a creature 
in Grod's image, aching for God's liberty, beating ever 
vainly and with crippled wings, that he may lift him- 
self into some freer, more congenial element — ^this, I 
say, were no better than to quite despair of man. Nay, 
it were to confess that all which is most akin to God in 
his human instincts is only semblance without reality. 
Do we not all find within us some dim ideal, at least, of 
a state unrealized, where action is its own impulse; 
where the struggles of birth are over, and the friction 
of interest and care is no longer felt ; where all that is 
best and highest is freest, and joyous because it is free ; 
where to be is to be great, because the inspiration of the 
soul is full, and to do is easy as to conceive ; where ac- 

2^ 



18 WORK AND PLAY. 

tion is itself sublime, because it is the play of ease and 
the equilibrium of rest ? 

Let no one imagine that I derogate thus from the 
dignity of work. Kather do I dignify it the more, that 
I represent it as the preparative to a state so exalted. 
Possibly our modern writers, in their zeal to dignify 
work, have sometimes excluded or omitted the notice 
of this, which is its only dignity. Indeed, some of our 
poets seem to have worked harder to change the world's 
work into poetry, than the world need have done to fin- 
ish it in prose. Work is transitional, having its good 
in its end. The design is, that, by a fixed law of na- 
ture, it shall pass into play. This is its proper honor 
and joy. 

Let us notice, then, for a moment, in what manner 
work becomes the preparative or necessary condition of 
play. Observe the child as a playing creature in the 
muscular life. Full of animated glee, unable to contain 
the brimming life that is in him, he must needs expend 
himself in action. He leaps about the ground, climbs 
into the trees, screams among his fellows in notes that 
tingle on the air ; not because he will, or has any ulte- 
rior end, but because the play-fund is in him, and he 
must. But we do not always note that a period of trial 
answering to work was necessary to prepare this liberty 
of motion ; that the child had first to practice eye, voice, 
ear, hand, foot, putting forth carefully by little and lit- 
tle, and gradually getting possession of the bodily ma- 
chinery that now plays so nimbly. Every muscle in 



WORK AND PLAY. 19 

his body had, in fact, to be graduated in the little uni- 
versity of motion, before he was ready for play. He 
had many falls to suffer, in order to get the balance of 
his members ; much crying to do, to get possession of 
his voice ; and this, I suppose, must be taken for work. 
By the same kind of necessity is mental and spiritual 
work necessary to the play-state of the soul. The man 
must go into experiment, through experiment or study 
get possession of his soul, so that he can turn every 
faculty whithersoever he will, and have the whole in- 
ternal machinery in the exactest play. I speak not 
here of the discipline merely of schools and colleges, 
but, as much, of the struggles we encounter and the 
scenes through which we pass in this great school of 
life — its objects, relations, and duties; its sturdy trials, 
fears, falls, crosses ; its works, and wars, and woes ; all 
discovering to us, and thus helping us to possess, our- 
selves. We get the helm thus of our thoughts, tempers, 
passions, aspirations, and wants. And if a vigorous 
training in the school be added, our capacities of taste, 
fancy, observation, and reason are also discovered, and 
limbered for the free activity of spiritual play. 

It will also be seen that this free state of man in- 
volves a moral experience, and possibly somewhat of a 
bad or selfish experience, whereby his choices may be 
settled in the permanent love of goodness. For this, in 
fact, is the greatness of all greatness, that it is of the 
man himself — the measure of his own free aims and as- 
pirations. And if so much depends on the soul's 
choices-, it needs to be made wise that it may choose 



20 WORK AND PLAY. 

wisely, and possibly to choose unwisely in order that it 
may be wise. Thus it descends into selfishness and 
evil, which are only forms of work, there to learn the 
wisdom of goodness in the contrasts of distaste, weari- 
ness, and hunger. And this, I suppose, is the solution 
of the various travail that is given to the sons of men 
to be exercised therewith. Some men work to get 
money ; others, quite as hard to spend it. Some men 
work to get reputation ; others, who have it by accident, 
work harder in seeing it go by a law. There is a labori- 
ous ease, and even a laborious idleness. What we call 
pleasure is commonly but another name for work; a 
strenuous joy, a laboriously prepared and therefore wea- 
risome happiness. We all go to our self-serving and 
work, till at last we learn, it may be, to cease from our- 
selves, and then — we play. 

But there is yet another office served by work, with- 
out which the state of play is never complete. The 
man must find inspiring forces, objects that exalt the 
feeling, ideals to embrace that will beget a spontaneous 
greatness in him. But he is ignorant, at first, even 
of facts ; and how shall he find his ideals, unless they 
are discovered in the practical throes of experience, la- 
bor, and study ? How shall he turn himself to things 
that shine with their own brightness, ideal objects born 
of the soul's own thought, and luminous by a divine 
quality hid in themselves, unless he has sweltered for a 
time in self-exercise and the dust of labor ? Then, at 
last, he conceives and embraces in his love sublimity, 
beauty, honor, truth, charity, God ; and the inspiration 



WORK AND PLAY. 21 

he feels imparts to him somewhat of a higher na- 
ture, spontaneously good, wise, great,— joyous of ne- 
cessity. 

Thus it is that work prepares the state of play. 
Passing over now to this latter, observe the intense 
longing of the race for some such higher and freer state 
of being. They call it by no name. Probably most 
of them have but dimly conceived what they are after. 
The more evident will it be that they are after this, 
when we find them covering over the whole ground of 
life, and filling up the contents of history, with their 
counterfeits or misconceived attempts. If the hidden 
fire is seen bursting up on every side, to vent itself in 
flame, we may certainly know that the ground is full. 

Let it not surprise you, if I name, as a first illustra- 
tion here, the general devotion of our race to money. 
This passion for money is allowed to be a sordid pas- 
sion, one that is rankest in the least generous and most 
selfish of mankind ; and yet a conviction has always 
been felt, that it must have its heat in the most central 
fires and divinest affinities of our nature. Thus the poet 
calls it the auri sacra fames — sacra^ as being a curse, 
and that in the divine life of the race. Childhood be- 
ing passed, and the play-fund of motion so far spent 
that running on foot no longer appears to be the joy it 
was, the older child, now called a man, fancies that it 
will make him happy to ride ! Or he imagines, which 
is much the same, some loftier state of being — call it 
rest, retirement, competence, independence — no matter 



22 WORK AND PLAY. 

by what name, only be it a condition of use, ease, lib- 
erty, and pure enjoyment. And so we find the whole 
race at work to get rid of work : drudging themselves 
to-day, in the hope of play to-morrow. This is that sa- 
cra fames J which, misconceiving its own unutterable 
longings after spiritual play, proposes to itself the dull 
felicity of cessation, and drives the world to madness in 
pursuit of a counterfeit, which it is work to obtain, work 
also to keep, and yet harder work oftentimes to enjoy. 
Here, too, is the secret of that profound passion for 
the drama, which has been so conspicuous in the culti- 
vated nations. We love to see life in its feeling and 
activity, separated from its labors and historic results. 
Could we see all human changes transpire poetically or 
creatively, that is, in play, letting our soul play with 
them as they pass, then it were only poetry to live. 
Then to admire, love, laugh ; then to abhor, pity, weep, 
— all were alike grateful to us ; for the view of suffer- 
ing separated from all reality, save what it has to feel- 
ing, only yields a painful joy, which is the deeper joy 
because of the pain. Hence the written drama, off'er- 
ing to view in its impersonations a life one side of life, 
a life in which all the actings appear without the ends 
and simply as in play, becomes to the cultivated reader 
a spring of the intensest and most captivating spiritual 
incitement. He beholds the creative genius of a man 
playing out impersonated groups and societies of men, 
clothing each with life, passion, individuality, and cha- 
racter, by the fertile activity of his own inspired feeling. 
Meantime the writer himself is hidden, and can not 



WORK AND PLAY. 23 

even suggest his existence. Hence egotism, wliicli also 
is a form of work, tlie dullest, most insipid, least inspir- 
ing of all kinds of endeavor, is nowhere allowed to ob- 
trude itself. The reader himself, too, has no ends to 
think of or to fear, —nothing to do, but to play the cha- 
racters into his feeling as creatures existing for his sake. 
In this view, the drama, as a product of genius, is, 
within a certain narrow limit, the realization of play. 

But far less effectively, or more faintly, when it is 
acted. Then the counterfeit, as it is more remote, is 
more feeble. In the reading, we invent our own scene- 
ries, clothe into form and expression each one of the 
characters, and play out our own liberty in them as 
freely, and sometimes as divinely, as they. Whatever 
reader, therefore, has a soul of true life and fire within 
him, finds all expectation balked, when he becomes an 
auditor and spectator. The scenery is tawdry and flat ; 
the characters, definitely measured, have lost their in- 
finity, so to speak, and thus their freedom; and what 
before was play descends to nothing better or more in- 
spired than work. It is called going to the play^ but it 
should rather be called going to the work ; that is, to 
see a play worked, (yes, an opera ! that is it) — men and 
women inspired through their memory, and acting their 
inspirations by rote ; panting into love, pumping at the 
fountains of grief, whipping out the passions into fury, 
and dying to fulfill the contract of the evening, by a 
forced holding of the breath. And yet this feeble coun- 
terfeit of play, which some of us would call only ^'very 
tragical mirth," has a power to the multitude. The^? 



24 WORK AND PLAY. 

are moved, thrilled it may be, with a strange delight. 
It is as if a something in their nature, higher than they 
themselves know, were quickened into power, — namely, 
that divine instinct of play, in which the summit of our 
nature is most clearly revealed. 

In like manner, the passion of our race for war, and 
the eager admiration yielded to warlike exploits, are re- 
solvable principally into the same fundamental cause. 
Mere ends and uses do not satisfy us. "We must get 
above prudence and economy, into something that par- 
takes of inspiration, be the cost what it may. Hence 
war, another and yet more magnificent counterfeit of 
play. Thus there is a great and lofty virtue that we 
call cour-age^ taking our name from the heart. It is the 
greatness of a great heart ; the repose and confidence 
of a man whose soul is rested in truth and principle. 
Such a man has no ends ulterior to his duty, duty 
itself is his end. He is in it therefore as in play, 
lives it as an inspiration. Lifted thus out of mere pru- 
dence and contrivance, he is also lifted above fear. 
Life to him is the outgoing of his great heart, — heart- 
age^ action from the heart. And because he now can 
die, without being shaken or perturbed by any of the 
dastardly feelings that belong to self-seeking and work, 
because he partakes of the impassibility of his prin- 
ciples, we call him a hero, regarding him as a kind of 
god — a man who has gone up into the sphere of the 
divine. 

Then, since courage is a joy so high, a virtue of so 
great majest}^, what could happen but that many will 



WORK AND PLAY. 25 

covet both the internal exaltation and the outward re- 
pute of it? Thus comes bravery, which is the counter- 
feit, or mock virtue. Courage is of the heart, as we 
have said ; bravery is of the will. One is the sponta- 
neous joy and re^DOse of a trul}' great soul; the other, 
bravery, is after an end ulterior to itself, and in that 
view, is but a forni of work, — about the hardest work, 
too, I flmcy, that some men imdertake. TThat can be 
harder, in fact, than to act a great heart, when one has 
nothino' but a will wherewith to do it ? 

Thus vou will see that conrao'e is above dano-er; 
bravery in it, doing battle on a level with it. One is 
secure and tranquil, the other suppresses agitation or 
conceals it. A right mind fortifies one, shame stimu- 
lates the other. Faith is the nerve of one, risk the 
plague and tremor of the other. For if I may tell you 
just here a very important secret, there be many that 
are called heroes who are vet without courao'e. They 
brave danger by their will, when their heart trembles. 
They make up in violence what they want in tranquil- 
litv, and drown the tumult of their fears in the rag-e of 
their passions. Enter the heart and you shall find, too 
often, a dastard spirit lurking in your hero. Call him 
still a brave man, if vou will, onlv remember that he 
lacks courage. 

Xo, the true hero is the great, wise man of duty ; he 
whose soul is armed by truth and supported by the 
smile of God ; he who meets life's perils with a cautious 
but tranquil spirit, gathers strength by facing its 
storms, and dies, if he is called to die, as a Christian 

3 



26 WORK A XI) PLAY. 

victor at the post of dl^t3^ And if we must have 
heroes, and wars wherein to make them, there is no so 
brilliant war as a war with wrong, no hero so fit to be 
sung as he who has gained the bloodless victory of 
truth and mercy. 

But if bravery be not the same as courage, still it is 
a very imposing and plausible couiiterfeit. The man 
himself is told, after the occasion is passed, how heroic- 
ally he bore himself, and when once his nerves have 
become tranquillized, he begins even to believe it. 
And since we can not stay content in the dull, unin- 
spired world of economy and work, we are as ready to 
see a hero as he to be one. Nay, we must have our 
heroes, as I just said, and we are ready to harness our- 
selves, by the million, to any man who will let us fight 
him out the name. Thus we find out occasions for war 
— wrongs to be redressed, revenges to be taken, such as 
we may feign inspiration and play the great heart un- 
der. We collect armies, and dress up leaders in gold 
and high colors, meaning, by the brave look, to inspire 
some notion of a hero beforehand. Then we set the 
men in phalanxes and squadrons, where the personality 
itself is taken away, and a vast impersonal person called 
an army, a magnanimous aiid brave monster, is all that 
remains. The masses of fierce color, the glitter of steel, 
the dancing plumes, the waving flags, the deep throb 
of the music lifting every foot — under these the living 
acres of men, possessed by the one thought of playing 
brave to-day, are rolled on to battle. Thunder, fire, 
dust, blood, groans— what of these? nobody thinks of 



WORK AND PLAY. 27 

these, for nobody dares to think till the day is over, 
and then the world rejoices to behold a new batch of 
heroes ! 

And this is the Devil's play, that we call war. We 
have had it going on ever since the old geologic era was 
finished. We are sick enough of the matter of it. We 
understand well enough that it is not good economy. 
But we can not live on work. We must have courage, 
inspiration, greatness, play. Even the moral of our na- 
ture, that which is to weave us into social union with 
our kind before God, is itself thirsting after play ; and 
if we can not have it in good, why then let us have it 
in as good as we can. It is at least some comfort, that 
we do not mean quite as badly in these wars as some 
men say. We are not in love with murder, we are not 
simple tigers in feeling, and some of us come out of bat- 
tle with kind and gentle qualities left. We only must 
have our play. 

Note also this, that, since the metaphysics of fighting 
have been investigated, we have learned to make much 
of what Ave call the moral of the army ; by which we 
mean the feeling that wants to play brave. Only it is a 
little sad to remember that this same moral, as it is 
called, is the true, eternal, moral nature of the man thus 
terribly perverted, — that which was designed to link 
him to his God and his kind, and ought to be the spring 
of his immortal inspirations. 

There has been much of speculation among the learn- 
ed concerning the origin of chivalry ; nor has it always 
been clear to what human elements this singular insti- 



28 WORK AND PLAY. 

tution is to be referred. But when we look on man, 
not as a creature of mere understanding and reason, but 
as a creature also of play, essentiall}' a poet in that 
which constitutes his higher life, we seem to have a so- 
lution of the origin of chivalry, which is sufl&cient, whe- 
ther it be true or not. In the forswearing of labor, in 
the brave adventures of a life in arms, in the intense 
ideal devotion to woman as her protector and avenger, 
in the self-reuouncing and almost self-oblivious worship 
of honor — what do we see in these but the mock-moral 
doings of a creature who is to escape self-love and the 
service of ends, in a free, spontaneous life of goodness ; 
in whom courage, delicacy, honor, disinterested deeds, 
are themselves to be the inspiration, as they are the end, 
of his being ? 

I might also show, passing into the sphere of religion, 
liow leo'al obedience, which is work, alwavs descends 
into superstition, and thus that religion must, in its very 
nature and life, be a form of play — a worship offered, a 
devotion paid, not for some ulterior end, but as being 
its own end and joy. I might also show, in the same 
manner, that all the enthusiastic, fanatical, and properly 
quietistic modes of religion are as many distinct coun- 
terfeits, and, in that manner, illustrations of my subject. 
But this you will see at a glance, without illustration. 
Only observe how vast a field our illustrations cover. 
In the infatuated zeal of our race for the acquisition of 
money, in the drama, in war, in chivalry, in perverted 
religion — in all these forms, covering almost the whole 
ground of humanity with counterfeits of play, that are 



WOBK AND PLAY. 29 

themselves t&e deepest movements of the race, I show 
you the boundless sweep of this divine instinct, and 
how surely we may know that the perfected state of man 
is a state of beauty, truth, and love, where life is its own 
end and joy. 

Passing now into the life of letters, we may carry 
^vith us a light that wall make intelligible and clear 
some important distinctions that are not always appre- 
hended. 

Here is the distinction between genius and talent, 
w^hich some of our youthful scholars are curious to set- 
tle. Grenius is that which is good for play, talent that 
w^hich is good for work. The genius is an inspired 
man, a man whose action is liberty, whose creations are 
their own end and joy. Therefore we speak, not of the 
man's doing this or that, but of the man's genius as do- 
ing it; as if there were some second spirit attendant, 
yielding him thoughts, senses, imaginations, fires of 
emotion, that are above his measure — lifting him thus 
into exaltations of freedom and power that partake of 
a certain divine quality. His distinction is, in fact, 
that he is a demonized or demonizable man. Talent, 
on the other hand, we conceive to be of the man him- 
self, a capacity that is valuable as related to ends and 
uses, such as the acquisition of knowledge or money, to 
build, cultivate, teach, frame polities, manage causes, 
fill magistracies. 

But w^e need to add that talent, in every sphere, 
passes into sfenius throua'h exercise : for if o-eniuses are. 



30 WORK AXL) PLAY. 

born, as we sometimes hear, they must yet be born 
again of study, struggle, and work. First the man 
comes into action, gets possession of himself, fills out 
the tone of his energies by efforts and struggles that 
are of the will. If then ideas find him, when he is 
ploughing in uses, and drop their mantle on him, he be- 
comes a prophet. I say, if they find him; for he is lit- 
tle likely to find them, by going after them. Inspira- 
tion sought is inspiration hindered. It must be a call. 
Xo man makes a breeze for his vessel by blowing in the 
sail himself. Xeither is any man to act the genius will- 
fully, or to have it for a question, previous to study and 
work, whether possibly he is boiTi to the life of genius. 
To preconceive the life is, in fact, not to suffer it. The 
most any mortal can do in this matter is to do nothing, 
— save to offer a pure, industrious, lively nature to all 
beauty and good, and be willing to serve them, till he 
is permitted to reign with them. If then there fall into 
his bosom, as it were out of heaven, thoughts, truths, 
feehngs, acts of good to be done, all of which are joy 
and reward in their own nature, and the man, taking- 
fire in these, as with something divine, rises into play, 
that is the kind of activity we mean by the word genius. 
For if there be an example, now and then, of some pre- 
cocious fondling, who appeal's to be born to inspiration, 
and begins to play in the lap, as it were, of mere nature 
— plays in the university as a poet, too divinely gifted 
for the tough discipline of study — if possibly he is reck- 
oned a genius, he will yet turn out to be a genius of the 
small order, and it will be wonderful, if, as lambs and 



W OK K AND PLAY. 81 

kittens are sobered by the graver habit of their major- 
ity, the growth of his beard does not exhaust his inspi- 
ration. However this may be, all the heavy and mass- 
ive forms of genius, all the giants of inspiration, are 
sons of work. 

Such being the distinction between talent and genius, 
we shall look for a like distinction in their demonstra- 
tions ; the distinction, namely, of work and play, activ- 
ity for an end and activity as an end, that of the empty 
and that of the full, the acquisitive and the creative, the 
ascent of the ladder and the ascent of fire. 

Here lies the distinction between wit and humor, a 
distinction which the rhetoricians have not always dis- 
tinctly traced, though well aware of some real and very 
wide difference in their effects. Wit is work, humor is 
play. One is the dry labor of intention or design, am- 
bition eager to provoke applause, malignity biting at an 
adversary, envy letting down the good or the exalted. 
The other, humor, is the soul reeking with its own 
moisture, laughing because it is full of laughter, as 
ready to weep as to laugh ; for the copious shower it 
holds is good for either. And then, when it has set the 
tree a- dripping, 

" And liuug a pearl in very cowslip's ear," 

the pure sun shining after will reveal no color of inten- 
tion in the sparkling drop, but will leave you doubting 
still whether it be a drop let fall by laughter, or — a 
tear. 

The rhetoricians have also labored much to make out 
some external definition by which prose may be distin- 



82 WOKK AXD PLAY. 

guished from poetn^. Xo sucli distinction is possible, 
till we pass into tlie mind of the writer, and contemplate 
his subjective state. If he writes for some use or end 
ulterior to the writing, and of course superior as a mo- 
tive, or if we read with a feeling produced that the writ- 
ing is only means to an end, that is prose. On the 
other hand, everv sort of writim^ which is its own end, 
an utterance made because the soul is full of feeling, 
beauty, and truth, and wants to behold her own joy, is 
poetry. She sings because the music is in her heart. 
Her divine thousrht burns, and words flock round about, 
fanning the fire with their wings, till she goes up in 
flame, unable to stay. 

Poetry, therefore, is play, as distinguished from prose, 
which is work. Hence, too, poetr\' is distinguished 
from prose by a certain quality that we call rhythm. 
For when a man thinks or acts for an end ulterior, sug- 
gested by self-love, then the drag of his end, being to- 
wards himself, makes a specialty of him, — he is a mote 
in the great universe, centered in itself and not in the 
sun, and pulling to get something to or in itself; there- 
fore he is out of rhvthm in his feelinsf, and the music of 
the stars will not chime with him. But when he lets 
go his private want or end to play, then he is part of 
the great universe under God, and consciously one with 
it, and then he falls into the rhythmic dance of the 
worlds, giving utterance, in beat and number, to a feel- 
ing that is itself played into beat and number, weaving 
and waving with those graces that circle the throne of 
all beautv, and chimino- with the choirs of li^rht in their 



AVORK AXD PLAY. 33 

universal, but, to the most of mankind, inaudible, hymn. 
Or, to bring an instance from below the stars, where no 
fiction may be suspected; as the mountains of the 
world, having a certain secret law of rhythm in their 
moulds and granite masses, take up the discordant 
sounds of horns or screaming voices, part the discords, 
toss the silvering harmonies about in reduplicating beats 
of echo, and fine away the notes till they seem vibra- 
tions of spirit, pulsing still, after the air is silent ; so, 
when a man falls under inspiration from God and his 
worlds, and begins to play, his soul forthwith becomes 
a tuneful creature ; his thouo:hts submit to the univer- 
sal rhythmic laws, and when he speaks he sings. 

If in verse, then, the number is cast by the feeling or 
inspiration ; all is of the feeling, and the words are 
gathered into their places, not by choice, but by a cer- 
tain instinct which they themselves feel after ; as when 
birds of passage hook themselves to each other in 
waving lines of propagated action, all feeling all, and 
chiming in the beat of their wings. If the writing be 
in the form of prose, and yet be truly in play, still it 
will be felt that some higher law than choice has called 
the words into their places. 'We have still a feeling of 
number and rhythm, and certain mystic junctures and 
cadences, born, as it were, of music, remind us that the 
son of song is here. 

The same may be said of the orator ; for there is no 
definite line of distinction, as many imagine, between 
the true orator and the poet, — unless we say that the 
orator is the poet in action, the impersonation of rhythm 



34 WOKK AXD PLAY. 

and pla}^ For though, the speaker begins with a cause 
which he is charged to gain, yet as he kindles w^ith his 
theme and rises into inspired action, his men become 
gods, his cause is lifted out of the particular into the 
universal, or into such a height that speaking for it be- 
comes an end in itself, and his advocacy, raised above 
the mere prose level, becomes a lofty, energetic impro- 
vising. What he began with a purpose hurries him on 
now as a passion. His look changes. His voice takes 
a modulation not of the will. His words and cadences 
seem rather to make use of him than to be used by him. 
His action, being no longer voluntary, but spontaneous, 
falls into the rhythm of play, where you distinguish the 
sharp, invective iambic, the solemn, religious spondee, 
the swift trochaic run of eagerness or fear, the heavy 
molossic tread of grief or sorrow. He becomes, in fact, 
a free lyric in his own living person, the most ani- 
mated and divinest embodiment of pla}^, — thus and 
therefore a power sublime above all others possible to 
man. 

Pursuing the same method, I might also exhibit a 
similar distinction of work and play between rhetorical 
beauty, labored by the rules of the professors, and the 
free beaut}^ of original creation. Criticism holds a like 
relation to all the productive energies of genius ; logic 
also a like relation to the spiritual insight of reason ; 
understanding a like relation to the realizations of faith. 

There is yet another topic which requires to be illus- 
trated, in order to complete my subject, but which I can 
touch only in the briefest manner. I speak of philoso- 



WORK AXD PLAY. 35 

phic method, or the true method of scientific discovery. 
The inductive method, sometimes called the Baconian, 
is commonly represented in a manner that would make 
the philosopher the dullest of beings, and philosophy 
the dullest of all drudgeries. It is merely to classify 
facts on a basis of comparison or abstraction ; that is, to 
arrange a show-box and call it philosophy! No, the 
first and really divine work of philosophy is to generate 
ideas, which are then to be verified by facts or experi- 
ments. Therefore we shall find that a certain capacity 
of elevation or poetic ardor is the most fruitful source 
of discovery. The man is raised *to a pitch of insight 
and becomes a seer, entering into things through God's 
constitutive ideas, to read them as from God. For what 
are laws of science but ideas of God, — those regulative 
types of thought by which God created, moves, and 
rules the worlds ? Thus it is that the geometrical and 
mathematical truths become the prime sources of scien- 
tific inspiration ; for these are the pure intellectualities 
of being, and have their life in God. Accordingly, an 
eloquent modern writer says, — ''I am persuaded that 
many a problem of analysis of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, 
and Euler, and the solution of many an equation, sup- 
pose as much intuition and inspiration as the finest ode 
of Pindar. Those pure and incorruptible formulas 
which already were before the world was, that will be 
after it, governing throughout all time and space, being, 
as it were, an integral part of God, put the mathemati- 
cian in profound communion with the Divine Thought. 
In those immutable truths, he savors what is purest in 



36 WORK AND PLAY. 

the creation. He says to the worlds, like the ancient, — 
^Let us be silent, we shall hear the murmuring of the 
Gods.^ " 

Accordingly we find, as a matter of historic fact, that 
the singular and truly wonderful man who first broke 
into the ordinances of heaven and got a foothold there 
for definite science was inflamed and led on by the in- 
spirations of geometry. ^'Figures pleased me," he says, 
^'as being quantities, and as having existed before the 
heavens." Therefore he exjDected to find the heavens 
included under geometric figures. Half mad with pro- 
phetic feeling, and astrologically possessed also by the 
stars, he goes up among them praying and joking and 
experimenting together, trying on, as it were, his geo- 
metric figures to see how they will fit, and scolding the 
obstinacy of heaven when they will not ; doubting then 
whether ^^ perhaps the gibbous moon, in the bright con- 
stellation of the Bull's forehead, is not filling his mind 
with fantastic images;" returning again to make ano- 
ther trial, and enduring labors which, if done in the 
spirit of work, would have crushed any mortal, — till, at 
last, behold ! his prophetic formula settles into place ! 
the heavens acknowledge it! And he breaks out in 
holy frenzy, crying, — ''What I prophesied two-and- 
twenty years ago, as soon as I discovered the five solids 
among the heavenly orbits ; what I believed before I 
had seen Ptolemy's Harmonics ; what I had promised 
my friends ; that for which I joined Tycho Brahe, I 
have brought to light ! It is now eighteen months since 
I got the first glimpse of light ; three months since the 



WORK AXD FLAY. 37 

dawn ; very few days since the unveiled sun, most ad- 
mirable to gaze on, burst out upon me. Notbing holds 
me ; I indulge my sacred fury ! I triumph over man- 
kind ! The die is cast; the book is written, — to be read, 
either now, or by posterity, I care not which. It may 
well wait a century for a reader, as God has been wait- 
ing six thousand years for an observer!" 

And yet this man was no philosopher, some will 
say ; he did not proceed by induction and the classifi- 
cation of facts, he only made a lucky guess ! Be it so, 
it was yet such a guess as must be made before science 
could get any firm hold of the sky; such a guess as 
none but this most enthusiastic and divinely gifted mor- 
tal, trying at every gate of knowledge there, could ever 
have made. 

So too it is now,' always has been, always will be, — 
boast of our Baconian method as we may, misconceive 
the real method of philosophy as we certainly do, — all 
great discoveries, not purely accidental, will be gifts to 
insight, and the true man of science will be he who can 
best ascend into the thoughts of God, he who burns be- 
fore the throne in the clearest, purest, mildest light of 
reason. 

Thus, also, it was that Linnaeus, when the mystic and 
almost thinking laws of vegetable life began to open 
upon him, cried, — ^'' Deum sempiternum^ omniscium^ om- 
nipotentem^ a tergo transeuntem^ vidi^ et ohstupuir 

So, too, when the animate races are to open their won- 
drous history, you yourselves have seen the hand of 
play, or of scientific genius, dashing out, stroke by 

4 



38 WORK AXD PLAY. 

stroke, in a few free lines, those creative types of God 
in which the liWng orders had their spring ; and have 
seemed, in the chalk formation of the lecture-room, to 
see those creatures leaping into life, which the other and 
older chalk formation under ground has garnered there, 
as the cabinet of Jehovah. 

But it is time to bring these illustrations to a close, 
and it is scarcely for me to choose the manner. They 
have their own proper close, towards which they have 
all the way been drawing us, and that we must now ac- 
cept; namely, this, — that, as childhood begins with play, 
so the last end of man, the pure ideal in which his being 
is consummated, is a state of play. And if we look for 
this perfected state, we shall find it nowhere, save in re- 
ligion. Here at last man is truly and completely man. 
Here the dry world of work and the scarcely less diy 
counterfeits of play are left behind. Partial inspirations 
no longer suffice. The man ascends into a state of free 
beauty, where well-doing is its own end and joy, where 
life is the simple flow of love, and thought, no longer 
colored in the prismatic hues of prejudice and sin, re- 
joices ever in the clear white light of truth. Exactly 
this we mean, when we say that Christianity brings an 
offer of liberty to man ; for the Christian liberty is onh'- 
pure spiritual play. Delivered of self love, fear, con- 
trivance, legal constraints, termagant passiohs, in a word, 
of all ulterior ends not found in goodness itself, the man 
ascends into power, and reveals, for the first time, the 
real greatness of his nature. 



WORK AXD PLAY. 39 

I speak thus, not professionally, but as any one, wlio 
is simply a man of letters, shonld. I am well aware 
that ChristiaDity has hitherto failed to realize the noble 
consummation of which I speak. We have been too 
much in opinions to receive inspirations ; occupied too 
much with fires and anathemas, to be filled with this 
pure love ; too conversant with mock ^-irtues and un- 
charitable sanctities, to receive this beautv or be kindled 
by this heavenly flame. And yet how evident is it that 
religion is the only element of perfected freedom and 
greatness to a soul ! for here alone does it finally escape 
from self, and come into the perfect life of play. For 
just as the matter of the worlds wants a law to settle its 
motions and be its element of order, so all intelligences 
want their element of light, rest, beauty, and play in 
Grod. Hence we are to look, as the world rises out of 
its barbaric fires and baptized, animosities into the sim- 
ple and free life of love, to see a beauty unfolded in hu- 
man thought and feeling, as much more graceful as it is 
freer and closer to God. Christian love is demonstrably 
the only true ground of a perfect aesthetic culture. In- 
deed, there is no perfect culture of any kind, which 
does not carry the man out of himself, and kindle in his 
human spirit those fi^ee aspirations that shall bear him 
up, as in flame, to God's own person. 

Therefore I believe in a future age, yet to be revealed, 
which is to be distinguished from all others as the godly 
or godlike age, — an age not of universal education sim- 
ply, or universal philanthropy, or external freedom, or 
political well-being, but a day of reciprocity and free 



40 WORK AXD PLAY. 

intimacy between all souls and God. Learning and re- 
ligion, the scholar and the Christian, will not be divided 
as they have been. The nniversities will be filled with 
a profound spirit of religion, and the bene orCtsse will be 
a fountain of inspiration to all the investigations of 
study and the creations of genius. 

I raise this expectation of the future, not because 
some prophet of old time has spoken of a day to come, 
when ''the streets of the city shall be full of boys and 
girls playing in the streets thereof," (for I know not that 
he meant to be so interpreted,) but because I find a pro- 
phecy of play in our nature itself, which it were a vio- 
lation of all insight not to believe will some time be 
fulfilled. And when it is fulfilled, it will be found that 
Christianity has, at last, developed a new literary era, 
the era of religious love. 

Hitherto, the love of passion has been the central fire 
of the world's literature. The dramas, epics, odes, nov- 
els, and even histories, have spoken to the world's heart 
chiefly through this passion, and through this have been 
able to get their answer. For this passion is a state of 
play, wherein the man loses himself, in the ardor of a 
devotion regardless of interest, fear, care, prudence, and 
even of life itself. Hence there gathers round the lover 
a tragic interest, and we hang upon his destiny, as if 
some natural charm or spell were in it. Now this pas- 
sion of love, which has hitherto been the staple of liter- 
ature, is only a crude symbol in the life of nature, by 
which God designs to interpret, and also to foreshadow, 
the higher love of religion, — nature's gentle Beatrice, 



WOKK AND PLAY. 41 

who puts her image in the youthful Dante, by that to 
attend him afterwards in the spirit-flight of song, and 
be his guide up through the wards of Paradise to the 
shining mount of God. What, then, are we to think, 
but that God will some time bring us up out of the liter- 
ature of the lower love, into that of the higher ? — thati 
as the age of passion yields to the age of reason, so the 
crude love of instinct will give place to the loftier, 
finer, more impelling love of God ? And then, around 
that nobler love, or out of it, shall arise a new body of 
literature, as much more gifted as the inspiration is 
purer and more intellectual. Beauty, truth, and wor- 
ship ; song, science, and dut}^, will all be unfolded to- 
gether in this common love. 

Society must of course receive a correspondent beauty 
into its character and feeling, such as can be satisfied no 
longer with the old barbaric themes of war and passion. 
To be a scholar and not to be a Christian, to produce 
the fruits of genius without a Christian inspiration, will 
no longer be thought of; and religion, heretofore looked 
upon as a ghostly constraint upon life, it will now be 
acknowledged, is the only sufficient fertilizer of genius, 
as it is the only real emancipator of man. 

If now it be doubted whether a hope of so great 
beauty is ever to be realized here on earth ; whether, 
indeed, the visions of the Christian seers that look this 
way are more than rhapsodies of their poetic mood, it 
must be enough that just such rhapsodies of promise 
are chanted by the world's own order. Let no expecta- 
tion seem romantic because it wears the air of poetry ; 

4- 



42 WORK AND PLAY. 

for religion is itself the elemental force of all free 
beauty, and thus of a life essentially poetic. Its in- 
spired seers and prophets are the poets of God. Its 
glorious future bursts up ever into song, and pictures 
itself to the ^aew in j)oetic sceneries and visions. Even 
the occupations and felicities of the good beyond life 
are representable only in the play of choirs and chinies 
of poetic joy. ^lusic and rhythm are the natural pow- 
ers, indeed, of order and crystallization, in the social 
life of all moral natures ; as we see in the fact that the 
ancient laws of the race were framed in verse, and sung 
into authoritv, as the carmen necessarhnn of the state. 
Therefore I can easily persuade myself, that, if the 
world were free, — free, I mean, of themselves, — brought 
up, all, out of work into the pure inspiration of truth 
and charity, new forms of personal and intellectual 
beauty would appear, and society itself reveal the Or- 
phic movement. No more will it be imagined that 
poetry and rhythm are accidents or figments of the race, 
one side of all ingredient or ground in nature. But we 
shall know that poetry is the real and true state of man, 
the proper and last ideal of souls, the free beauty they 
long for, and the rhythmic flow of that universal play 
in which all life would live. 



II. 

THE TRUE WEALTH OR WEAL OF NATIONS.* 



Mr. President, — 

It is truly a great satisfaction to me, that I appear 
before you, not to claim a place, but only to supply a 
chasm in the succession of your distinguished and elo- 
quent speakers. I am thus permitted to feel, that I 
discharge an office rather of good vrill and fraternity, 
than of ambition ; and if I do not leap into the chasm 
that has occurred, with exactly the zeal of a Curtius, I 
may at least cherish the hope, as I go down, that the 
ground will close over me, and the line of your dis- 
tinguished orators pass on without any mark of disrup- 
tion. 

I propose to speak of the greatness and happiness of 
states, and especially of our own ; which I shall do, not 
ambitiously, or as coveting the distinction of an orator, 
but in the way of practical and grave discussion. 

Wherein consists, and how shall be attained, the true 
greatness and felicity of a state ? 

My chief concern will be to offer something which, 

■^ Delivered as an Oration before the Society of Phi Beta. Kappa, Yale 
College, August 15, A. D. 18-37. 



4A THE TRUE WEALTH 

for argument and doctrine, is worthy of so grave a 
problem. I hope it may appear, that a ground is here 
open for the erection of a science more adequate, in 
some respects, than the science, so called, of political 
economy ; and one that shall base itself on higher and 
more determinate principles. That the body and form 
of such a science can be developed in a single discourse, 
will not be supposed. If I am only able to open a pas- 
sage, so that we may look in upon the field to be occu- 
pied, or if I may but excite to investigation of the subject 
the young men of this honored university, who are soon 
to fill public stations and difluse the leaven of their opin- 
ions in every part of the republic, my end will be an- 
swered. 

If any, in our present crisis of diflSiculty and depres- 
sion, have ceased to hoj)e for their country, it needs to 
be remembered, as a check to this precipitate despair, 
how much of mischief and misrule every great nation 
has had to survive. Moreover, I know not the time 
when the prospects of our country, judiciously viewed, 
were brighter than now. That we are able to bear so 
violent a shock, without any disruption of the laws, is 
enough, in itself, to encourage new confidence in our 
institutions. This strong-handed compulsion, too, which 
has checked the impetuosity and the increasing reck- 
lessness of our people, is accomplishing, by force, what 
arguments and warnings were powerless to effect — com- 
pelling them to know the worth of principles and of 
wise and judicious leadei's. We have not yet come to 
the end of our institutions, but rather to an inteiTeg- 



OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 45 

num of sobriety and reason, in which truth may find a 
place to interpose her counsels, and in which, I trust, 
the most solid and healthful principles are to find a 
more ready reception. 

It is in this confidence that I now speak. And while 
I am encouraged by the temper of the times, I can not 
expel the conviction, too, of some positive and peculiar 
agreement between my subject — I trust also between 
the principles to be advanced — and a destiny of real 
greatness, certainly to be reached by our country. 
There are too many prophetic signs admonishing us, 
that Almighty Providence is pre-engaged to make this 
a truly great nation, not to be cheered by them, and set 
ourselves to a search after the true principles of national 
welfare, with a confidence that here, at last, they are to 
find their opportunity. This western world had not 
been preserved unknown through so many ages, for any 
purpose less sublime, than to be opened, at a certain 
stage of history, and become the theater wherein better 
principles might have room and free development. 
Out of all the inhabitants of the world, too, a select 
stock, the Saxon, and out of this the British famil}^, the 
noblest of the stock, was chosen to people our country ; 
that our eagle, like that of the prophet, might have the 
cedars of Lebanon, and the topmost branches of the ce- 
dars, to plant by his great waters. A belt of temperate 
climate was also marked out for our country, in the 
midst of a vast continent, with a view, it would seem, 
to preserve the vigor of the stock, and make it fruitful 
here, as it ever has been, in great names and great ac- 



46 THE TRUE WEALTH 

tions. Furthermore, it is impossible to glance at the 
very singular territory we occupy, without perceiving 
that the two great elements of force are to be developed 
together, in this people, as they never yet have been in 
history. These elements, of course, are weight and 
motion — vastness of conception and vigor of action. 
Though we have a field every way ample to contain 
two hundred millions of inhabitants, there is yet no 
vast central inland, remote from the knowleds^e and 
commerce of mankind, where a people may dream out 
life, in the gigantic but crude and sluggish images of 
Asiatic repose. Vast as it is, and filling the minds of 
its people always with images of vastness, it is yet sur- 
rounded, like the British islands, and permeated, like 
Venice itself, by the waters of commerce — becoming 
thus a field of vastness, not in repose, but in action. 
On the west it meets the Pacific, and the waters of 
another hemisphere. On the east and south, a long 
bold line of coast sweeps round, showing the people 
more than a thousand leagues of the highway of the 
world. On the north, again, stretches a vast mediter- 
ranean of congregated seas, sounding to each other in a 
boisterous wild chorus, and opening their gates to the 
commerce of far distant regions. Then again, across 
the land, down all the slopes and through valleys large 
enough for empires, sweep rivers that are moving 
lakes. All the features of the land are such as con- 
spire to form a people of vast conceptions, and the most 
intense practical vigor and activity. And already do 
these two elements of force appear in our people, in a 



OR WEAL OF XATIOXS. 47 

combination more striking and distinct than ever before 
in any people whose education was so unripe. Iseed I 
say, that such a people can not exist without a great 
history. We have been told, that stars of nobility and 
orders of hierarchy, as they exist in the old world, are 
indispensable, as. symbols, to make authority visible, 
and inspire the people with great and patriotic senti- 
ments. But how shall we long for these, in a country 
where God has ennobled the land itself in every feature, 
filling it with the signs of his own august royalty, and 
training the people up to spiritual vastness and force by 
sj^mbols of his own ! 

But we detain our subject. Plato, Locke, and other 
philosophers who have written theoretically concerning 
government, failed to establish any conclusive doctrine, 
only because they busied themselves in planning con- 
stitutions, and discussing the forms of government. 
Forms must be the birth of circumstances, not of any 
abstract or absolute doctrine. The attempt of Locke, 
seated in his study, to produce a complete frame of 
government for South Carolina, was one of signal au- 
dacity, and worthy of the very signal defeat it met in 
its application. 

Civil philosophy, if any such thing is possible, must 
begin with a definition of the object of the civil state, 
and confine itself to adjusting the principles, not the 
forms, by which that object may be secured. There is 
always some end or object, some good pursued by a state, 
which determines its polity. The institutions of Lycur- 



48 THE TRUE AVEALTH 

gus, for example, have their object in the formation of a 
valorous people. The Spartan state, accordingly, never 
advances in wealth or in the arts, never becomes a truly 
polite nation, never even adds to her empire by conquest. 
All the lines of her history and polity terminate to- 
gether in producing a den of lions. The Eoman state, 
in like manner, concentrated its aim on the pursuit of 
empire, and no bird or beast of prey was ever more 
constant to its instincts, than the Eoman policy to its 
object, till it achieved the dominion of the world. 
Other nations have pursued objects more complex, fall- 
ing of course into systems of polity equally complex 
with their objects. The great fundamental question, 
then, on which everything in civil philosophy hinges, 
is to determine what is the end which a state ought to 
pursue, or in what the true greatness and felicity of a 
state consists. Which makes it the more remarkable, 
that almost no thought has been expended in bringing 
this question to a definite settlement. Even Lord Bacon 
soberly puts forth the atrocious, the realh^ Satanic' doc- 
trine, '' that it is the principal point of greatness, in any 
state, to have a race of military men, and to have those 
laws and customs which mav reach forth unto them iust 
occasions (as may be pretended) of war." What a con- 
ception to be given out by a philosopher! And yet 
even this verv shockinsr wav of srreatness would have, 
at least, the merit of making a soldierly and manly peo- 
ple — just what we are most likely to miss of in the 
present drift of society. For it is the really shameful 
fact, that we are now turning our policies and public 



OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 49 

measures, more and more, on questions of money and 
trade ; as if property were the real end of statesmanship. 
Since the words wealth and lueal are brothers of the 
same family, many appear to imagine that the political 
economists, Adam Smith and his disciples, having care- 
fully defined that national wealth which is to be the end 
of their science, have therein defined that national weal 
which is the true end of statesmanship — a mistake that 
has occurred the more naturally, that the general deifi- 
cation of money begets a tendency in the same direction. 
And so it comes to pass, in the modern school of na- 
tions, especially in those that have conquered to them- 
selves the great principle that government is for the 
good of the governed, that their evil genius seems about 
to plunge them into the miserable delusion of confound- 
ing the good of the governed with money and posses- 
sions; and so to rob them of all the noble advantages 
they had gained. Ceasing to care, any more, for what 
the people are, the great question now is, what they are 
to have ? Under the supposed auspices of the new sci- 
ence, a new era of misgovernment is thus inaugurated. 
And the danger is that the free nations so called will 
become mercenary as free ; nations without great senti- 
ments or great men ; without a history ; luxurious, cor- 
rupt, and, in the end, miserable enough to quite match 
the worst ages of despotism. 

There is, besides, in the new science of political econ- 
omy, careful as it is in its method, and apparently un- 
answerable in its arguments, an immense oversight, 
which is sure to be discovered by its final effects on so- 

5 



50 THE TRUE WEALTH 

ciety, and to quite break up the aspect of reality it has 
been able to give to its conclusions. It deifies, in fact, 
the laws of trade ; not observing that there is a whole 
side of society and human life which does not trade, 
owns no laws of trade, stands superior to trade, wields, 
in fact, a mightier power over the public prosperity it- 
self—just because it reaches higher and connects with 
nobler ends. Could these price-current philosophers 
only get a whole nation of bankers, brokers, factors, 
ship-owners and salesmen, to themselves, they would 
doubtless make a paradise of it shortly — only there 
might possibly be no public love in the paradise, no 
manly temperance, no sense of high society, no great 
orators, leaders, heroes. 

After all it is not the whole question — this question 
of economy. Suppose, for example, that some very 
young nation, one that has not yet run itself into all 
manifold industries and forms of creation, like the older 
nations, were to put implicit faith in the new science, 
and consent to buy, always, what she can cheaper buy 
than create ; so to become, in fact, a producer of but 
one article — cotton, for example, or wheat. Such a 
state will be no complete creature, like a body whose 
breathing, pulsing, digesting, assimilative, and a hun- 
dred other, processes, all play into each other, in that 
wonderful reciprocity that makes a full-toned vital or- 
der, but it will be like a body having only a single 
function. It will be low in organization. It will have 
no great consciousness and scarcely any consciousness 
at all. For it has no relational system of parts and 



OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 51 

offices. The men are repetitions, in a sense, of each 
other, and society is cotton, or wheat, all through — 
nothing more. Mind is dull, impnlse morbid and unre- 
liable. There is no great feeling, nothing to make 
either a history of, or a man. Living thus a thousand 
years, the nation becomes nothing better than a pro- 
vincial country a thousand years old. Could they now 
sell out all the great gains, made by their wise trading 
economy, and buy, for such a price, the dear, deep 
public love that belongs to a people duly manifolded 
in their works and productive arts, the rich gifts of 
feeling and sentiment, the ennobled state-consciousness, 
out of which spring the soldiers and heroes, the orators 
and poets, and the great days of a great people, it 
would be juBt the wisest trade and best economy they 
have ever known — best, I mean, not only for the char- 
acter it would bring, but for their creative energy 
and even for the total, at last, of their wealth itself 
Nay, if they would only march disgustfuUy out, some 
day, leaving all their lands and properties behind, just 
to get rid of their ineffable commonness, their exodus, 
for a purpose so manly and so truly great, would even 
beat the exodus of Aloses. 

What, then, it is time for us to ask, is that wealth of 
a nation which includes its weal, or solid well-being ? 
that which is the end of all genuine policy, and all true 
statesmanship ? It consists, I answer, in the total value 
of the persons of the people, National wealth is personal, 
not material. It includes the natural capacity, the in- 
dustry, the skill, the science, the bravery, the loyalty, 



52 THE TKUE WEALTH 

the moral and religious worth of the people. The 
wealth of a nation is in the breast of its sons. This is 
the object which, accordingly as it is advanced, is sure 
to bring with it riches, justice, liberty, strength, stabil- 
ity, invincibility, and every other good; or which, 
being neglected, every sort of success and prosperity is 
but accidental and deceitful. 

That any statesman should look upon the persons of 
his countrymen as secondary, in consequence, to money 
and possessions ; or that he should not value the reve- 
nue of great abilities and other high qualities that may 
be developed in them, — vigor, valor, genius, integrity, — 
above any other possible increase or advantage, discloses 
a sordid view of state policy, and reflects on tlie people 
themselves, in a manner fit to be resented. ^' You will 
confer," says Epictetus, "the greatest benefit on your 
city, not by raising the roofs, but by exalting the souls 
of your fellow-citizens ; for it is better that great souls 
should live in small habitations, than that abject slaves 
should burrow in great houses." It is not difficult to 
feel the justice of this noble declaration ; for it is not a 
secret to saij one of mankind, that a very rich man 
may yet be a very insignificant man, a very unhappy 
man, a very dishonorable man, — nay, that he must be 
so, if he has lived only for gain, and made all wisdom 
to consist in economy. To understand that states are 
made up of individuals, is still less difficult. Well was 
it that the sordid god of gold and of misers was placed 
under ground; by what strange mistake is he to be 
brought up now and installed king of nations? 



OK WEAL OF NATIONS. 53 

The truth, which I assert, and which seems too evi- 
dent to require any formal argument, is happily illus- 
trated by reference to the Mexican state, as contrasted 
with our own. It was not a peaceful band of emigrants 
or exiles who landed there to find a refuge, and a place 
to worship God according to their own consciences. It 
v/as not the Saxon blood, nor the British mind, filled 
with the determinate principles and lofty images of 
freedom enshrined in the English tongue. They came 
in the name of a proud empire, armed for conquest and 
extirpation. The infernal tragedy of Guatemozin was 
the inaugural scene of Mexican justice. They loaded 
themselves with gold and silver. They rioted in plun- 
der and spoil, founded nothing, cherished no hope of 
liberty, practiced no kind of industry but extortion, 
erected no safeguards of morality. What is the result ? 
Worthless, or having no personal value in themselves, 
there has grown out of them what alone could grow ; a 
nation of thriftless anarchists and intriguers, without 
money at the very mouth of their mines, without char- 
acter abroad or government at home, and with nothing 
to hope for in the future, better than they have suffered 
in the past. How striking an example, to show, that 
neither a fine country nor floods of gold and silver, can 
make a nation great, without greatness in the breasts of 
her sons ! 

Eevert now to the simple beginnings of our founders. 
They brought hither, in their little ships, not money, 
not merchandise, no array of armed force, but they 
came freighted with religion, learning, law, and the 



54 THE TRUE WEALTH 

spirit of men. They stepped forth upon the shore, and 
a wild and frowning wilderness received them. Strong 
in God and their own heroic patience, they began their 
combat with danger and hardship. Disease smote 
them, but they fainted not ; famine, but they feasted on 
roots with a patient spirit. They built a house for 
God, then for themselves. They established education 
and the observance of a stern but august morality, then 
legislated for the smaller purposes of wealth and con- 
venience. They gave their sons to God ; through him, 
to virtue ; and through virtue, to the state. So they 
laid the foundations. Soon the villages began to smile, 
churches arose still farther in the depths of the wilder- 
ness, industry multiplied her hands, colleges were es- 
tablished,, the beginnings of civil order completed them- 
selves and swelled into the majesty of states. And 
now, behold, the germs of a mighty nation are mani- 
fest — a nation of law, art, industry, and power, rushing 
on a career of expansion never equaled in the history 
of man! What addition, we are now tempted to ask, 
could any amount of wealth have made to the real force 
and value of these beginnings ? Or, having a treasure 
in her sons, what is there beside, whether strength, 
growth, riches, or anything desirable, which a state can 
possibly fail of? Wealth is but the shadow of men ; 
and lordship and victory, it has been nobly said, are 
but the pages of justice and virtue. 

But let us descend, for a few moments, to grounds of 
mere economy. Let it be granted, that wealth is the 
true and principal object of state polity. I am anxious 



OK WEAL OF NATIOXS. OO 

to inquire, how wealth is to be created, and especially, 
in what form wealth is to be accumulated. It would 
almost seem that the fancy which floats so delightfully 
before the minds of men, in their pursuit of private 
gain, must throw the same charm over national wealth. 
The state is to become prodigiously rich, they seem to 
imagine, against her old age ; and then she will be able, 
with the stock laid in, to support her great family at 
their ease, on the mere interest of the money. But how 
is her great wealth to be laid up, or in what shape ? 
Isot in notes and bills, certainly, that are due from one 
to another within the nation ; for it adds nothing to the 
wealth of a family, that one of the sons owes another. 
Not in specie ; for gold and silver are good for nothing 
in themselves, but only as they will buy something else. 
And if thev were confined within the nation, and not 
allowed to purchase articles from abroad, as the case 
supposes, they would only pass from hand to hand 
within the nation, and the prices of all articles would 
be raised, according to the plenty there is of gold and 
silver. Silver, perhaps, being as plenty as iron, a ton 
would be exchanged for a ton of iron, and the man who 
owns a hundred tons of it, would have it piled up in 
the street — as rich as he now is with a few thousand 
dollars, and no more. But if not in notes and bills, not 
in specie, in what form is the national wealth to be laid 
up? In a cultivated territory, I reply, in dwellings, 
roads, bridges, manufactories, ships, temples, libraries, 
fortifications, monuments; — things which add to the 
beauty, comfort, strength, or productiveness, of the na- 



56 THE TRUE WEALTH 

tion. But what are all these things, but the products 
and representatives of personal quality and force in the 
people? And what shall ever maintain them in good 
keeping or repair, but snch quality and force ? Taken 
together, they are scarcely more than a collection of the 
tools of industry and production ; and if a nation, with- 
out application, or skill, or such a state of morals as 
permits the security of property, were to receive a 
country ready furnished with such a wealth, the pro- 
ductive farms would soon be impoverished, the towns 
decayed, the ships rotten, the stands of art and machi- 
nery dilapidated and wrecked. Only change the qual- 
ity of the British people into that of the Mexican, and 
five years w^ould make their noble island a seat of pov- 
erty and desolation. Where then is accumulation, in 
what form is wealth to be laid up, but in the personal 
quality and value of the people? This immaterial 
wealth, too, which many would think quite unsubstan- 
tial in its nature, is really more imperishable and inde- 
structible by far than any other. There is never any 
amount of property and goods laid up by a nation, 
which the mere accident of a war, or an unsettled gov- 
ernment, may not destroy, in a few years, so as to leave 
the nation virtually poor. But immaterial values, such 
as native capacity, attachment to home, knowledge, 
skill, courage, and the like, are a stock, which ages 
only of reverse and declension can utterly consume. 
No failure of commerce, no famine, no war and confla- 
gration desolating the land, no rapacity of conquest, 
can reach these treasures. Time only, with all his le- 



OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 0/ 

gions of rnin, can slowly master them. And if, per- 
chance, a respite should be given, they will suddenly 
start up as a capital that had been invisible, .and, in a 
few years, fill the land with all its former opulence. 

Take another aspect of the subject. The great foe to 
wealth which statesmen have to contend with, is dead 
consumption — that which annihilates value without re- 
producing it. It can be shown, for example, from un- 
questionable data, that fashionable extravagance in our 
people, such as really transcends their means to a de- 
gree that is not respectable; theatrical amusements, 
known to be only corrupt and vulgar in character ; to- 
gether with inteniperate drinking, and all the idleness, 
crime, and pauperism, consequent, have annihilated, 
since we begran our historv, not less than three or four 
times the total wealth of the nation. This dead con- 
sumption is the great cancer of destruction, which eats 
against all industry and production. It must be kept 
out, or cut out, or the flesh must be more than supplied, 
else there is no advance of wealth. Xow if economy is 
to furnish the law of civil administration, as according 
to current reasonings it is, let economy provide a rem- 
edy against this all-devouring and fatal consumption. 
And since it originates only in a corruption of quality 
in the people — in a want of simplicity, temperance, 
providence, and good manners — since the spendthrifts 
of the family are the bad sons, let the statesman take 
care not to educate spendthrift sons. Let him turn his 
whole attention to the great subject of preparing a just, 
provident, industrious people. Let him spare no possi- 



58 THE TRUE WEALTH 

ble expense for this object. Let him, in fact, forget all 
economy in his devotion to higher aims, and by that 
time he will be a consistent and thorough economist. 

But the distribution of wealth is a matter of more* 
consequence to a state than its amount. When the 
Eoman state was at the height of its wealth, there were 
not more than twenty landholders in Italy ; the rest of 
the people were dependents — an idle, thriftless, profli- 
gate race, ripe for every possible mischief and sedition. 
There could not be a more miserable condition in anv 
state ; it permitted no such thing as character, law, se- 
curity, or domestic comfort. But I will require it of 
any statesman to show how a more equal division of 
property can be effected, without robbery, unless by 
means of intelligence, application, frugality, devotion 
to home and family, in the breasts of the people. Let 
me add, that the changes now rapidly taking place in 
New England, the broad and partially hostile distinc- 
tions that begin to display themselves, are sad omens, 
and leave us no time to squander in merely economical 
policies. 

It is farther to be noted, that the wealth of a nation 
must be defended, as well as constructed. "We have 
not yet reached the day when mere principles of equity 
are a sufficient bulwark to nations. Even if the days 
of absolute conquest are past, there are yet a thousand 
liabilities to violent encroachments on the honor and 
rights of a people, which they can not be passive under, 
without sacrificing a national spirit, and well-nigh dis- 
solving the bonds of government itself. But where lies 



OR WEAL OF XATIOXS. 59 

the strength of a nation's defense? In such things as 
monej^ purchases — ships, fortifications, and magazines 
of war ? 'No ! the real bulwarks of a nation are the 
bodies of her sons ; or, I should rather say, the spirit 
and principles of her sons. They are public love, wis- 
dom, and high command, attachment to home, and 
bravery. Courage is necessary to the spirit and true 
manhood of a people, though pursuing a policy even 
of non-resistance. And true courage is a high trait. 
It is not to be bought with, money, not to be inspired 
by an occasion. It can not be infused into a mean-bred 
and sensual people. It is the brother in arms of con- 
scious integrity. In its highest examples it is super- 
natural, and by faith in God waxes valiant. How 
often has the single sentiment of courage been worth 
more to a people, in a merely economical estimate, than 
any possible amount of treasure ? 

To seek farther illustration of a position so nearly 
self-evident as the one I advance, would only reflect 
suspicion upon it. The personal value of a people is 
the only safe measure of their honor and felicity. 
Economy holds the same place in their polity, which it 
holds in the life of a wise and great man — a subordi- 
nate place, and when subordinate, honorable. But 
their highest treasures as a state, they behold in capa- 
ble and manly bodies, just principles, high sentiments, 
intelligence, and genius. To cherish these in a people, 
to provide a noble succession of poets, philosophers, 
lawgivers, and commanders, who shall be the directing 
head, and the nerves of action ; to compact all into one 



60 THE TRUE WEALTH 

energetic and stately body inspirited by public love — 
this is the noble study of true ' philosophic statesman- 
ship. ^'Alas, sir!" exclaimed Milton, suddenly grasp- 
ing this whole subject as with divine force, ^' a common- 
wealth ought to be but as one huge Christian person- 
age, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, 
as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look, 
what the grounds and causes are of single happiness to 
one man, the same ye shall find them to a whole state." 
Here, in a single sentence, he declares the true idea of 
a state, and of all just administration. 

But however correct in theory, such views, it will be 
suspected, are, after all, remote and impracticable. 
How, especially, can we hope to bring our intractable 
democracy upon so high a ground of principle ? I can 
not entirely sympathize with such impressions. His- 
tory clearl}^ indicates the fact, that republics are more 
ductile than ^nj other form of government, and more 
favorable to the admission of high-toned principles, and 
the severer maxims of government. The confederate 
republics of Crete, and the daughter republic of Sparta, 
were no other than studied and rigorous systems of 
direct personal discipline upon the people, in which 
wealth and ease were in no wise sought, but sternly 
rejected. And in what monarch}^, or even despotism, 
of the world, where but in plain republican Eome, the 
country of Cato and Brutus, is a censor of manners and 
morals to be endured, going forth with his note-book, 
and for any breach of parental or filial duty observed, 
for seduction of the youth, for dishonor in the field, for 



OR WEAL OF XATIOXS. 61 

a drinking bout, or even for luxurious manners, inflict- 
ing a civil degradation upon the highest citizens and 
magistrates ? The beginnings, too, of our own history, 
are of the same stern temperament, and such as per- 
fectly to sympathize with the highest principles of gov- 
ernment. Indeed I have felt it to be, in the highest de- 
gree, auspicious, that the ground I vindicate before 
you requires no revolution, being itself the true Amer- 
ican ground. May we not also discover even now, in 
the worst forms of radicahsm and j)olitical depravation 
among us, a secret elemental force, a law of republican 
feeling, which, if appealed to on high and rigid prin- 
ciples, would yield a true response? AYe fail in our 
conservative attempts, more because our principles are 
too low, than because they are too high. A course of 
administration, based on the pursuit of wealth alone, 
though bad in principle anywhere, is especially bad in 
a republic. It is more congenial to the splendors and 
stately distinctions of monarchy. It concentrates the 
whole attention of the nation upon wealth. It requires 
measures to be debated only as they bear upon wealth. 
It produces thu.s a more egregious notion of its dignity, 
continually, both in the minds of those who have it, 
and of those who have it not, and thus it exasperates 
every bad feeling in a republic, till it retaliates destruc- 
tion upon it. But a system of policy, based on the 
high and impartial principles of philosophy, one that 
respects only manly bodies, high talents, great senti- 
m.ents and actions, one that values excellence of person, 
whether found in the palaces of the rich or the huts of 



62 , THE TRL'E WEALTH 

the poor, holding all gilded idleness and softness in the 
contempt they deserve — such a system is congenial to 
a republic. It would have attractions to our people. 
Its philosophic grounds, too, can be vindicated by a 
great variety of bold arguments, and the moral absurd- 
ity of holding wealth in higher estimation than personal 
value, can be played out in the forms of wit and satire, 
so as to raise a voice of acclamation, and overwhelm the 
mercenary system with ntter and final contempt. 

I ought to say, that no constitutional change in our 
system is requisite or contemplated. It is only neces- 
sary that we sustain the distinctness and high independ- 
ence of the state governments. The general govern- 
ment is mainly fiscal and prudential in its sphere of 
action. The highest and most sacred duties belong to 
the individual states. It is the exact and appropriate 
sphere of these, to prepare personal wealth in the peo- 
ple. They should be as little absorbed, therefore, as 
possible, in the spirit and policy of the general govern- 
ment. Each state should have the interest, in itself, of 
a family, a sense of character to sustain, a love of its 
ancestors and its children, a just ambition to raise its 
quota of distinguished men, to be honored for its litera- 
ture, its good manners, and the philosophic beauty of 
its disciplinary institutions. 

But let ns glance at some of the practical operations 
of our doctrine more particularly. The personal value 
of the people being the great object of pursuit, the first 
care of a state will of course be to preserve and ennoble 
the native quality or stock of its people. It is a well- 



OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 68 

known principle of physiology, that cultivation, bodily 
and mental, and all refinements of disposition and prin- 
ciple do gradually work, to increase the native volume 
and elevate the qualitj' of a people. It is by force of 
this principle, long operating, that states occupying a 
similar climate have become so different in tempera- 
ment, talent, and quality of every kind. In this prin- 
ciple, a field of promise truly sublime opens on the 
statesmen of a country. And yet, I know not that 
more than two or three lawgivers ever made the ennob- 
ling of theii' stock a subject of practical attention. The 
fi'ee mingling and crossing of races in the higher ranges 
of culture and character would doubtless be a great 
benefit to the stock. But the constant importation, as 
now, to this country, of the lowest orders of people from 
abroad, to dilute the quality of our natural manhood, is 
a sad and beggarly prostitution of the noblest gift ever 
conferred on a people. Who shall respect a people, 
who do not respect their own blood ? And how shall 
a national spirit, or any determinate and proportionate 
character, arise out of so many low-bred associations 
and coarse-grained temperaments, imported from every 
clime ? It was in keeping, that Pan, who was the son 
of every body, was the ugliest of the gods. It is well 
known, too, that vices and degraded manners have a 
sad effect in sinking the quality of a people. We hear 
of one whole people, who are in danger of dwindling 
to absolute extinction, by force of this simple cause. 
And let the day but come to any people, when it is 
true that every man participates in the infected blood 



6-4 THE TRUE WEALTH 

of drunkenness, or any corrupt vice, and it will be a 
people as certainly degenerate, to some degree, in bod- 
ily stature and force, in mental quickness and gener- 
osity. Do I then speak of enforcing morals by law ? 
Certainly I do. Only a decent respect for the blood of 
the nation requires it. But the punishments declared 
against such vices as poison the blood of a nation, 
ouo'ht to be suitable : thev ouo-ht to be such as denote 
only contempt. If it would be too severe, in the man- 
ner of an ancient Eoman punishment, to inclose the de- 
linquent in a sack, with some appropriate animals, and 
throw him into the water, let him somehow be made a 
mark for mocker}' and derision. But let there be no 
appearance of austerity in the laws against vice. Let 
cheerful and happy amusements be provided, at the 
public expense. Let the youth be exercised in feats of 
agility and gTace, in rowing and the spirited art of 
horsemanship. Erect monuments and fountains, adorn 
public walks and squares, arrange oranamental and sci- 
entific gai'dens, institute festivals and games for the con- 
test of youth and manhood in practical invention, in 
poetry, philosophy, and bodily prowess. Provide ways 
and means, go to any expense, to enliven the state and 
make the people happy, without low and vulgar pleas- 
ures. The sums now expended, every j'ear, in a single 
article of appetite and of dead consumption, would de- 
fray every expense of this kind. In the same view, 
great cities will not be specially desired, and all confined 
employments will be obviated, as far as possible. For it 
is not in great cities, nor in the confined shops of trade, 



OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 65 

but principally in agriculture, that the best stock or 
staple of men is grown. It is in the open air, in com- 
munion with the sky, the earth, and all living things, 
that the largest inspiration is drunk in, and the vital 
energies of a real man constructed. The modern im- 
provements in machinery have facilitated production to 
such a degree, that when they become diffused through 
the world, only a few hands, comparatively, will be 
requisite in the mechanic arts; and those engaged in 
agriculture, being proportionally more numerous, will 
be more in a condition of ease. Here opens a new and 
sublime hope. If a state can maintain the practice of a 
pure morality, and can unite with agriculture a taste 
for learning and science, and the generous exercises I 
have named, a race of men will ultimately be raised up, 
having a physical volume, a native majesty and force 
of mind, such as no age has yet produced. Or if this 
be not done, if the race are to sink down into idleness 
and effeminate pleasures, as production is facilitated, 
the gTcat inventions, we prize will certainly result in a 
dwarfed and degraded staple of manhood. 

Pass, now, from the subject of native quality and ca- 
pacity, to that of personal and moral improvement. 
Grod has given eyes to the body of man, by which to 
govern his feet and guide his other motions. So he has 
given to the mind a regulative eye — a faculty, whose 
very office it is to command all the others. But, sup- 
pose some one to busy himself in devising a system by 
which men shall be entibled to walk by the sense of 
smell or of touch. It were not a more absurd ingenu- 

6'' 



66 THE TRUE WEALTH 

itj, than to attempt a state policy which shall govern 
men through their appetites, or their love of gain, or 
their mere fears. The conscience must be entered, or 
der and principle must be established in the seat of 
the soul's regency ; and then a conservative and genial 
power will flow down thence on every other faculty 
and disposition, every frame of bodily habit, every em- 
ployment and enterprise, and the whole body of the 
state will rise with invigorate thrift and full proportion 
in every part. To this end, a state must be grounded 
in religion. Though not established as a part of the 
political system, it must be virtually incorporate in the 
principles and feelings of the people. If it were possi- 
ble for a people to subsist without some kind of relig- 
ion, it would be a mere subsistence — without morals, 
without a true public enthusiasm, without genius, or an 
inspired literature. The highest distinction they could 
possibly attain to, would be the advancement of mate- 
rial philosophy. Being worshipers of matter, they 
miQ:ht be o'ood observers of matter, but onlv in the 
lower and individual aspects of things; the Higher 
Eeason, which dictates all material forms and relations, 
and dwells in them, they could not perceive. *^ They 
that deny a God," says Bacon, *^ destroy man's nobility; 
for, certainly, man is of kin to the beasts by his body, 
and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base 
and ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanim- 
ity and the raising of human nature ; for take an exam- 
ple of a dog, and mark what a^courage and generosity 
he will put on, when he finds himself maintained by a 



OR WEAL OF KATIOKS. 67 

man, who to him is instead of a God; which courage is 
manifestly such as that creature, without that confi- 
dence of a better nature than his own, could never at- 
tain." This confidence of a better nature is religious 
faith ; and here it is that man begins to look beyond 
mere sense and outward fact in his thoughts. And in 
this point of view, religion is seen to be the spring of all 
genius. Genius is but an intellectual faith. It looks 
round on the world and life, and beholds not a limit, in 
some sense, not a reality ; but the confidence, in all, of 
a better nature. The forms, colors, and experiences of 
life, are not truth to it, but only the imagery of truth. 
Boundaries break way, thought is emancipated, a 
mighty inspiration seizes and exalts it ; and what to 
others is fact and dead substance, to it is but a vast 
chamber of spiritual imagery. Colors -are the hues of 
thought, forms embody it, contrasts hold it in relief, 
proportions are the clothing of its beauty, sounds are 
its music. Whose the thought is, its own reflected, or 
God's presented, it may never pause to inquire; or 
with the immortal Kepler, it may exclaim, in the pious 
ecstasy of a child — O Lord, I think thy thoughts after 
thee ! In either case, the world is changed — it is no 
more the whole, but only the sign of things. The 
blank walls of sense are become significant, and a 
world beyond the world is beheld in distinct embody- 
ment. 

Nearly allied to religion, as a power ennobling man, 
is reverence for ancestors. There is something essen- 
tially bad in a people who despise or do not honor their 



68 THE TRUE WEALTH 

originals. A state .torn from its beginnings is frag- 
mentary, incapable of public love, or of any real na- 
tionality. Ko such people were ever known to develop 
a great character. Eome was not ashamed to own that 
she sprung of refugees and robbers, and boasted, in 
every age, her old seer Numa who gave her laws and a 
religion. Athens could glory in the fiction that her 
ancestors were grasshoppers, sprung out of the earth as 
an original race. England has never blushed to name 
her noble families from the Danish or Saxon pirates 
who descended on her coast. Piety to God, and piety 
to ancestors, are the only force which can impart an or- 
ganic unity and vitality to a state. Torn from the past 
and from God, government is but a dead and brute ma- 
chine. Its laws take hold of nothing in man which re- 
sponds ; they are only paper decrees, made by the men 
of yesterday, which the men of to-day have as good 
right to put under their feet. What is it which gives 
to the simple enactment of words written on paper, the 
force of law — a power to sway and mould a mighty na- 
tion? Is it the terror of force? Why does not all 
force disclaim it ? Is it that some constituted body of 
magistrates enacts it? But how do the magistrates 
themselves become subject to it, in the very act of pro- 
nouncing it, as if it were uttered by some authority 
higher than they? This is the only answer: Law is 
uttered by the National Life — not by some monarch, 
magistrate, or legislature, of to-day, or of any day, but 
by the state ; by that organic force of which kings, 
magistrates, legislatures, of all times, have been but the 



OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 69 

hands, and feet, and living instruments; that force 
which has grown up from small and perilous begin- 
nings, strengthened itself in battles, spoken in the 
voices of orators and poets, and been hallowed at the 
altars of religion. Grlorious and auspicious distinction 
it is, therefore, that we have an ancestry, who, after 
every possible deduction, still overtop the originals of 
every nation of mankind — men fit to be honored and 
held in reverence while the continent endures. 

I have not time to show in what way religion and a 
suitable reverence to ancestors may be promoted in our 
state and nation. If only a due sense of their dignity 
and necessity were felt, the means would not be difficult 
to reach. Only let every statesman, or magistrate, 
honor religion in his private life ; let him say nothing, 
in his speech publicly, to reflect on the sacredness of 
religion ; make no appeal to passions inconsistent with 
it in the people — by that time wisdom will find out 
ways to do all which is necessary. So let every public 
man who has profaned the ashes of his ancestors, ex- 
ulted in sweeping down their safeguards and landmarks, 
and excited the ignorant people to a prejudice against 
them, degrading to themselves and destructive to public 
love — ^let him, I say, cease from his crime, and receive 
better feelings to his heart. And there, in the place 
where Washington sleeps, let the statesman who denies 
a monument because it is an expense, fall down and 
draw from the hallowed earth, if he may, some breath 
of justice and magnanimity. Beginning thus, I trust 
we might not cease till every spot signalized in our his- 



70 " THE TRUE WEALTH 

tory is marked by some honorable token of national re- 
membrance. 

There is not a nobler office for a state, than the edu- 
cation of its youth, or one more congenial to a just am- 
bition. Abandoning the mercenary and merely eco- 
nomical policy, and ascending to higher views, it \Yill 
behold its richest mines in the capabilities of its sons 
and daughters. Upon the cultivation of these it will 
concentrate the main force of its polity, and will pro- 
duce to itself a glorious revenue of judges, senators, 
and commanders; wives to adorn and strengthen the 
spheres of great men; citizens who will make every 
scene of life and every work of industry to smile. Oh ! 
I blush, for once, to think of my country ! It has gone 
abroad — we ourselves have declared — that we are an 
enlightened people. And doubtless a republican na- 
tion, one too that has filled the world with its name, 
must be a nation of special culture. Suppose a commis- 
sioner were sent out from some one of the venerable 
kingdoms of the old world, to examine and report upon 
our admirable systems of schools. First of all, he will 
say, when he returns, I found in America no system of 
schools at all, and scarcely a system in any one school. 
I ascertained, that in four states adjacent to each other, 
there were more children out of school than in all the 
kingdom of Prussia. Traveling through New England, 
which is noted for its schools, I observed that the school- 
houses were the most comfortless and mean -looking 
class of buildings, placed in the worst situations, with- 
out shades or any attraction to mitigate their barbarit3\ 



OK WEAL OF nations'. 71 

Into these dirty shops of education, the sons and 
daughters are driven to be taught. I found, on in- 
quiry, that a man, for example, who would, give a 
cheap sort of lawyer from ten to twenty dollars for a 
few hours' service, is giving the professor of education 
from one to two dollars for a whole winter's work on 
the mind of his son. On the whole, I found that the 
Americans were very providently engaged in planting 
live oak timber for the service of their navy in future 
generations, but I did not discover that they had any 
particular concern, just now, about soldiers, command- 
ers, and magistrates for the coming age. The picture 
is, alas ! too just. Indeed, the public are not altogether 
insensible to these things. I hear them often com- 
plained of by those who do not seem to understand 
that they are only the legitimate fruit of their own 
principles. What other result could possibly appear, 
in a country whose policy itself is only concerned with 
questions of loss and gain ? 

A national literature consummates and crowns the 
greatness of a people. The best actions, indeed, and 
the highest personal virtues, are scarcely possible, till 
the inspiring force of a literature is felt. There can 
not even be a high tone of general education without a 
literature. A state must have its renowned orators and 
senators ; the spirit of its laws and customs must be de- 
veloped in a venerable body of judicial learning; its 
constitutions must have been clothed with gravitj^ and 
authority by the admiration of philosophers and wise 
men; its beginnings, its great actions, its fields of 



72 THE TRUE WEALTH 

honor, the names of its lakes, rivers, and mountains, 
must have been consecrated in song ; then the nation 
becomes, as it were, conscious of itself, and one, because 
there is a spirit in it which the men of every class and 
opinion, nay, the earth and the air, participate. But, 
alas ! there must be something of true manhood and 
spiritual generosity, to produce such a literature. A 
mercenary mind is incapable of true inspiration. The 
spirit of gain is not the spirit of song : and philosophers 
will not be heard discoursing in the groves of paper 
cities. Besides, had our country been pursuing, as it 
ought, the noble policy of producing its wealth in the 
persons of its people, those relaxations by which the 
right of suffrage has been put into the hands of the 
imworthy, would never have been made. And then, 
after they were made, our most cultivated citizens 
would not have withdrawn from their country so 
despairingly; they would have come forward, in the 
spirit of public devotion, and contributed all their 
energies to the noble purpose of making our whole 
people, since they are called to rule, fit to rule. They 
would even have consoled themselves in that which 
they had feared, by the discovery of a philosophic ne- 
cessity, that their country, at whatever sacrifice, should 
be completely torn from British types, in order to be- 
come a truly distinct nation. Least of all, would the 
best talents of the nation have lent themselves to the 
task of soberly reasoning out discouragement to our in- 
stitutions, because they are not supported by noble and 
priestly orders. The worst radicalism which our coun- 



OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 73 

try has ever suflfered, lias been this, which, under the 
guise of a sickly and copied conservatism, has discour- 
aged all nationality, by demanding for the state that 
which is radically opposed to its fundamental elements, 
and which God and nature have sternly denied. A na- 
tion must be distinct, and must respect itself as distinct 
from all others, else it can not adorn itself with a litera- 
ture, or attain to any kind of excellence. And, in this 
view, the most efficient promoter and patron of Ameri- 
can literature, is that man who has honored the consti- 
tution of his country by the noble stature of his opin- 
ions and his eloquence ; who has stood calm and self- 
collected in the midst of factious doctrines and corrupt 
measures on every side, and whose voice has been 
heard in the darkest hours, speaking words of encour- 
agement and hope to his countrymen. Fully impressed 
with the grandeur of the British state and constitution, 
and copiously enriched himself by the wealth of British 
literature, he has yet dared to renounce a state of cli- 
ency, and be, in a sense, the first American. It is only 
needed now, that a voice of faith should break out in 
our colleges and halls of learning, and that our consti- 
tutions be set forth in their real grounds, and vindicated 
by a philosophy strongly and truly American, to hasten 
wonderfully the day of our literature. And the tokens 
are, that we must have a literature, not scholastic or 
cosmopolitan, like that of Germany, which is the litera- 
ture of leisure and seclusion ; but one that is practical 
and historical, one that is marked by a distinct nation- 
ality, like the Athenian and the British ; one, too, it 

7 



74 THE TKUE WEALTH 

must be, of vast momentum in its power on the world. 
It will be eloquence, humor, satire, song, and philoso- 
phy, flowing on with and around our history. And as 
our history is to be a struggle after the true idea and 
settlement of liberty, so our literature will partake in 
the struggle. It will be the American mind wrestling 
with itself, to obtain the true doctrine of civil freedom ; 
overwhelming demagogues and factions, exposing usurp- 
ations, exploding licentious opinions, involved in the 
fearful questions which slavery must engender, borne, 
perhaps, at times, on the high waves of revolution, re- 
clining at peace in the establishment of order and jus- 
tice, and deriving lessons of wisdom from the conflicts of 
experience. As American and characteristic, it will re- 
volve about and will ever be attracted towards one and 
the same great truth, whose authority it will gradually 
substantiate, and, I trust, will at length practically en- 
throne in the spirit and opinions of our people. This 
truth is none other than, that liberty is justice se- 
cured. Establishing this truth in a general and per- 
manent authority, which I trust it may do in the very 
process of investing the same with a glorified body in 
letters, it will bring our history to a full consummation. 
It will place our nation on the same high platform with 
the divine government, which knows no liberty other 
than law ; and there it shall stand immortal, because it 
has found the rock of immortal principle. 

But I must close. I have detained you too long, and 
yet I have only touched on a few points in this vast 



OR WEAL OF NATIONS. YD 

subject, and witli studied brevity. Wben I think of 
the amount of talent assembled here, in this honorable 
society, and in the numerous band of young men pre- 
paring here to act a part in their country, a feeling of 
duty constrains me to address you personally. May I 
not hope, that the principle I have asserted, approves 
itself to the sober and serious conviction of your judg- 
ment? And have you not some generous kindlings of 
desire and purpose stirring in your breasts, that move 
you to be advocates and champions for your country, 
in a cause of so great honor ? Feel, in every place and 
station, that you defraud your country, and, worse than 
this, defraud the honor of your own mind, if you do not 
resist, and, on every proper occasion, denounce every 
merely mercenary scheming policy of government. 
Eemind your countrymen of their persons, and the no- 
bler wealth of the mind. A field is open before you, 
wherein to win a just and holy renown. Be not afraid 
to be republicans. Be not afraid of a principle. He 
who has a principle is inspired. Doubtless there is 
some dif&culty in swaying the opinions and prejudices 
of our people. Cut the worst impediment truth has 
ever had to complain of, in our country, has been in 
its spiritless and distrustful advocates. There needs to 
be a certain exaltation of courage and inspired perti- 
nacit}^ in the advocates of truth. She must not be dis- 
trusted, or cloaked in disguises and accommodations. 
She must go before, in full unsoiled whiteness, and the 
majesty and spirit of her gait must invigorate her fol- 
lowers. Truth is the daughter of God. He possessed 



76 THE TRUE WEALTH 

lier in the beginning of his wa}^ Silence is her voice. 
The charmed orbs heai* it forever, and, following and 
revolving, do but transcribe her word. The masses 
and central depths also know her presence, and the 
gems sparkle before her in their secret places. The 
bnried seeds and roots inwardly know her, and pencil- 
ing their flowers and preparing their several fragrances, 
send them np to bloom and exhale around her. She 
penetrates all things. ISTot laws, not bars, nor walls, 
can exclude her goings. Even prejudice, and the mad- 
ness of the people, which can not look upon her face, 
do yet behold her burnished feet with secret amaze- 
ment. Understanding, then, that truth is almighty, let 
us become her interpreters and prophets. Have faith 
in truth. Install her in the affections of your youth, 
consecrate to her all your talents, and the full vigor of 
your lives, and be assured that she will in no wise per- 
mit you to fail ; she will fill joii with peace and lead 
you to honor. 

In the principles I have now asserted, I have a fall 
and immutable confidence. They are true principles. 
They have power to impress themselves. They only 
want enthusiasm to worship them, voices to speak 
them, minds to reason for them, and courage steadfast 
and resolute to maintain them, and having these they 
can not fail to reign. 

And in that, I see the dawn of a new and illustrious 
vision. I see the nation rising from its present depres- 
sion, with a chastened but good spirit. I see education 
beginning to awake, a spirit of sobriety ruling in busi- 



OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 77 

ness and in manners, religion animated in her heavenly 
work, a higher self-respect invigorating our institutions, 
and the bonds of our country strengthened by a holier 
attachment. Our eagle ascends 'and spreads his wings 
abroad from the eastern to the western ocean. A hun- 
dred millions of intelligent and just people dwell in his 
shadow. Churches are sprinkled throughout the whole 
field. The sabbath sends up its holy voice. The seats 
of philosophers and poets are distinguished in every 
part, and hallowed by the affections of the people. 
The fields smile with agriculture. The streams, and 
lakes, and all the waters of the world, bear the riches 
of their commerce. The people are elevated in stature, 
both mental and bodily; they are happy, orderly, 
brave, and just, and the world admires one true exam- 
ple of greatness in a people. 

7^ 



III. 

THE GROWTH OF LAW* 



Few persons, it is presumed, have failed to observe, 
that there are two great stages in the matters of human 
life and experience, one of which is always preparing, 
and merging itself in, the other. It is so, not simply in 
the sense of an apostle, when he says — '' first that which 
is natural, afterward that which is spiritual ;" but, with- 
out going out of the world, or over to the resurrection, 
for the matter of the contrast, we may say universally — 
what is physical first, what is moral afterwards. 

The child begins his career as a creature of muscles 
and integuments, a physical being endued with sensa- 
tion. Whole years are expended in making acquaint- 
ance with the body he lives in. By acting in and 
through this organ, he discovers himself, begins to be a 
thinking and reflective creature, and finally flowers into 
some kind of character. 

The world itself is first a lump of dull earth, a mere 
physical thing seen by the five senses. The animals 
that graze on it, see it as we do. But thought, a little 

* Delivered as an Oration before the Society of Alumni, in Yale Col- 
lege, Aug. 16, A. D. 1843. 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 79 

farther on, begins to work upon it and bring out its 
laws. The heights are ascended, the depths explored, 
and every star and atom is found to be so congener to 
thought, that mind can think out and assign its laws. 
The whole field of beiijg thus brought into science, 
takes an attribute of intelligence and reflects a Univer- 
sal Mind. Every object of knowledge and experience, 
too, discovers moral ends and uses, and assumes a visi- 
ble relation to our spiritual training. Now the old 
physical orb on which our five senses grazed is gone, 
we can not find it. All objects are become mental ob- 
jects, and matter itself is moral. 

If we speak of language, this, as every scholar knows, 
is i^hysical in every term. Words, all words, are only 
names of external things and objects. Next, the words, 
which are mere physical terms — names, that is, of ob- 
jects, colors, shapes, acts, motions — pass into use as 
figures of thought and vehicles of intelligence. The 
physical world takes a second and higher existence, 
thus, in the empire of thought. Its objects beam out, 
transfigured with glory, and the body of matter be- 
comes the body of letters. The story of Orpheus is 
now no more a fiction ; for not only do the woods and 
rocks dance after this one singer, but all physical ob- 
jects, in heaven and earth, having now found an intel- 
lectual as well as a material power, follow after the cre- 
ative agency of thinking souls, and pour themselves 
along, in trains of glory, on the pages of literature. 

Even religion is physical in its first demonstrations — 
a thing of outward doing ; a lamb, burned on an altar 



80 , THE GPvOT\'TH OF LAW. 

of turf, and rolling up its smoke into heaven; a 
gorgeous priesthood; a temple, covered with a king- 
dom's gold, and shining afar in barbaric splendor. 
Well is it if the sun and the stars of heaven do not look 
down upon realms of prostrate worshipers. Nay, it is 
well if the hands do not fashion their own gods, and 
bake them into consistency in fires of their own kind- 
ling. But, in the later ages, God is a spirit ; religion 
takes a character of intellectual simplicity and enthrones 
itself in the summits of the reason. It is wholly spirit- 
ual, a power in the soul, reaching out into worlds be- 
yond sense, and fixing its home and rest where only 
hope can soar. 

Civil government, also, in its first stages, classes 
rather with the dvnamic than with the moral forces. 
It is the law of the strongest ; a mere physical absolut- 
ism, without any consideration of right, whether as due 
to enemies or subjects. At length, after it has worn it- 
self deep into the neck of nations, by long ages of arbi- 
trary rule, the masses begin to heave with surges of un- 
easiness. They discover the worth of their being in 
what it suffers. They reason about rights ; they rebel 
and revolutionize ; they set limits to power and define 
its objects; till, at length, government loses its physical 
character and seeks to rest itself on moral foundations, — 
on the good it does, the love it wins, the patriotic fire 
it kindles; in a word, on the moral sentiment of the 
governed. 

Now it is to be with virtue itself and its law, pre- 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 81 

cisely as it is in these other matters — this I undertake to 
show. The same kind of transition from a coarse, raw, 
physical state is here preparing, and is to be finally 
passed. All wrongs partake, more or less, of violence. 
All crude moralities are deformities gendered by poli- 
cies, lies, and revenges — by mixtures of passion, force, 
and fear. Whatever we call moral disorder in the 
world comes of the fact, that men are willful, forceful, 
withdrawing towards what is physical, and away from 
the pure affinities of principle. But there is and is to 
be a growth of law, and a growth into law, and the 
moral imperative is thus to obtain a more and more 
nearly spontaneous rule in the world ; till finally the 
transition above named will be made, and a better cir- 
cle of history entered — the same, if you will indulge 
the fancy, which gleamed so brightly, as a future 
golden age, on the vision of the ancient sages and seers 
of classic days — the same, with no indulgence of fancy, 
which wiser sages and prophets more inspired have 
boldly promised. 

Of course it will not be supposed that I dare to an- 
ticipate any such consummation, on the ground of a 
mere natural progress in the race. I take the world 
with all God's supernatural working, that of his Provi- 
dence, that of his Spirit, all Christianity, in fact, in- 
cluded in it. In this largest, most comprehensive, view 
of the race, it is that I venture on so large a promise. 
If, then, I can help you to anticipate any so splendid re- 
sult to the painful and wearisome history of our race ; 
if I can bring to the toils of virtue in our bosoms, any 



82 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

such confidence or hope of triumph ; if I can open to 
learning and genius these exhilarating hopes and these 
wide fields of empire; I shall not speak in vain, or 
want a justification before you. 

At this venerable seat of learning letters are subordi- 
nate always to virtue and religion; which makes it 
only the more fit, in addressing you as Alumni, that I 
offer to engage you in the question, when, or by what 
means, shall society and learning have their common 
aims fulfilled in the complete sovereignty of truth and 
right among men ? As the founders had the highest 
veneration for the classics and for intellectual ornament 
of every kind, and could yet value their foundation as 
the means to a yet higher end — in which they embraced 
whatever is good or magnificent in the future history 
of the race — so the institution still values itself and is 
valued by its numerous body of friends, in every part 
of our great country, as the support of truth and right- 
eousness. We ourselves cleave to it as to a good 
mother, whose name and remembrance is made dearer 
to us, by the moral experience of life and the wisdom 
of years. Possibly, if mere learning or literary splen- 
dor were its object, it might have gained an easier ce- 
lebrity, and, with less of elegant learning, might have 
had the repute of more. But virtue and truth have a 
long run, and it will be found, as the years and ages 
wear away, and society ascends to its destiny of splen- 
dor, that this institution, modestly ordained to be the 
servant of virtue, ascends with it, and gains to itself the 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 83 

highest honors of learning, by its union to the highefet 
well-being and glory of the race. 

We stand here, then, on a moral eminence, where 
learning nnites her destinies to that of virtue, we look 
abroad up and down the track of human life, to see 
whither it leads, and especially, to fortify our confi- 
dence of a day when all the great forces of society — 
policy, law, power, learning, and art — shall bow to the 
lordship of moral ideas, and the just sovereignty of 
their rule in all human affairs. 

What now, let us ask, is necessary to this result — by 
what means, if at all, shall it be reached? This we 
shall see by a glance at the nature of the moral depart- 
ment, or law side of our human life. 

In what is called virtue, there are two distinct 
spheres and kinds of obligation ; that of fundamental 
principle, and that of outward, executory practice, or 
expression. In the allegiance of the soul to the funda- 
mental principle, all virtue consists; in the due con- 
fo*rmity of outward action to the code which regulates 
that sphere, the virtue is fitly exercised and worthily 
expressed. 

Inquiring next for the fundamental principle, it is 
right; a simple, original, necessary idea, a kind of cate- 
gory indeed of the soul's own nature ; for, as we could 
not ask when? if we had no idea of time, or how 
many ? if we had no idea of number, or what proposi- 
tions are true ? if we had no idea of truth, so we could 
never ask what things are right? if we had not the 



84 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

idea of right, self-announced and asserting its rightful 
authority in our consciousness. "We think in these nat- 
ural categories, and without them could not even begin 
to think as intelligences at all — should not, in fact, he 
men. 

To define this idea of right is impossible because it is 
simple ; the most we can do is to note that a straight 
line is the natural symbol of it; therefore we call 
it right^ or rectus ; that is, straight. Or we may note 
that scripture, so very close to nature — '^.et thine C3'es 
look right on, and thine eyelids look straight before 
thee." 

By this ideal law we should be bound, even if wo 
existed apart from all relations, just as God was bound 
before all his acts of ci'eation ; therefore we call it the 
law absolute. But we haye another law exactly twin 
to this in terms of relational existence ; it is love. This 
latter belongs more especially to religion, which is itself 
relational, as respects God, since God imdertakes — that 
is the whole aim of his government — to be the defender 
of right. But the two are so far measures each of the 
other, that whoever is fixed and centralized in one, will 
be in the other, as God Himself is. 

Here, now, as we have intimated, is the substance of 
virtue ; it is righteousness, it is love. Being so entered 
into the principle of all virtue, the next question will 
be, passing into the second sphere of virtue, by what 
acts, doings, works, dispositions, shall we fitly represent, 
execute, outwardly express, the principle into which we 
have come? Having the substance, what shall be the 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 85 

manners and modes by wliich we are to show it and 
give it fit exercise? It is here, as when we pass out of 
the pure mathematics into computations of forms, dis- 
tances, orbits, and forces. The real substance of virtue 
is constituted by no outward doings or practices. 
These have no moral character in themselves. Merit 
and demerit are never measured by them, but only by the 
fundamental law. In these true virtue is only concerned 
to act herself out. And there is no small difficulty in 
solving the question, how ? For this world of outward 
action is made up of infinite particulars, separable by 
no absolute distinctions, and flowing continually to- 
wards or into each other. Thus we shall ask what the 
scripture, as a revelation of God, enjoins, either directly 
or by analogy ? then what is the practice sanctioned by 
custom or the common law of society ? what is useful, 
equal, true, beautiful ? — in a word, what forms of action 
are aesthetically fit to express the light, or a right 
spirit? These rules of conduct thus elaborated are, of 
necessity, only proximate. They may be crude and 
discordant ; they may be such as even to limit, and, as 
a more cultivated age might judge, to corrupt the 
strength of virtue. Of course, there is room for indefi- 
nite amplification and refinement in this outward code, 
if by any means it may be accomplished. 

We have a way of speaking which attributes the ap- 
proval or disapproval of outward acts to the conscience. 
But according to the scheme of ethics here adopted, this 
is true only in a popular sense. The conscience is our 
sense of the authority of right, or our consciousness of 

8 



86 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

receiving or rejecting this great internal law. All 
questions of outward duty are questions of custom, rev- 
elation, judgment, taste — they belong to the sphere of 
outward criticism, in which we are impelled hy the in- 
ternal law, and seek to realize it. The conscience is no 
out-door faculty, as the popular language supposes. 
That we come into being with a conscience in which all 
possible acts in all possible circumstances, are discrim- 
inated with infallible certainty beforehand and apart 
from the aid of experience and judgment, is incredible. 
Quite as hard for belief is it that, if our conscience were 
required, hy itself^ to settle all the questions of duty as 
they occur, (which perhaps is the popular notion,) it 
would not rise up, like Mercury among the gods as Lu- 
cian fancies, and protest against the infinite business of 
all sorts it has thrown upon it. 

Having now in view this two-fold nature of law, we 
perceive that there are two ways in which it may possi- 
bly advance its power, and only two. If the tone of 
the conscience, or of its ideal law can be invigorated ; 
if also the aesthetic power, that which discriminates in 
outward forms, can be so disciplined, or so enriched in 
spiritual culture, as to distinguish all that is most be- 
neficent and beautiful in conduct, bringing on thus to 
perfection the code of outward practice, the two great 
conditions of moral advance are fulfilled. That just 
this two-fold process is, and, in all past ages, has been, 
going on I shall now undertake to show. I will then 
take up three great forces of history, always generically 
distinct from each other, the Greek, the Koman, and the 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 87 

Christiau, showing how they have conspired and are 
always, in fact, operating together, to advance the 
power of moral ideas, and establish their complete 
reign in the world. 

Is there any law, then, in human history, by which 
the authority of conscience is progressively invigorated ? 

Leaving out of view religious causes, of which I will 
speak in another place, consider the remarkable and 
ever widening contrast that subsists, between the earli- 
est and latest generations of history, in respect to a re- 
flective habit. The childlike age, whether of the indi- 
vidual or of the race, never reflects on itself The lit- 
erature and conduct of the early generations are marked 
by a certain primitive simplicity. The whole motion 
of their being travels outward, as the water from under 
the hills, and no drop thinks to go back and see whence 
it came. They act and sing right out, unconscious even 
in their greatness, as the harp of its music, or the light- 
ning of its thunder. Virtue in such an age is mainly 
impulsive. It is such a kind of virtue as has not in- 
tellectually discovered its law. If now the mind be- 
comes reflective in its habit, if it analyzes itself and 
discovers, among all the powers and emotions of the 
soul — some permanent, and many fugitive as the winds 
— one great, eternal, irreversible law, towering above 
every other attribute of reason, thought, and action, and 
asserting its royal prerogatives ; if it discovers remorse 
coiled up as a wounded snake and hissing under the 
throne of the mind ; if, too, it discovers the soul itself, 



88 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

as a spiritual nature, strong with inherent immortahty, 
and building with a perilous and terrible industry here, 
the structure of its own future eternity ; it can not be 
that the moral tone of the conscience will not be power- 
fully invigorated. And the transition I here describe, 
from an unreflective to a reflective habit, is one that is 
evermore advancing, and will be to the end' of the 
world. 

Next, as it were, to give greater verity to ideas and 
laws of mental necessity and so to the law of the con- 
science developed by reflection, geometry and the exact 
sciences will be discovered. The Pythagorean disci- 
pline began, we are told, with a period of silence ; and 
as silence, according to Lord Bacon, is the fermentation 
of the thoughts, the disciples were thus started into a 
habit of reflection. Next they were exercised in geom- 
etry, to make them aware of the reality, rigidity, and 
invincibility of ideal truth — that kind of truth which is 
developed by reflection. Then they passed into the 
law of virtue, and through this up to God. The school 
of Crotona was, thus, a miniature of the great world it- 
self The mathematics are mere evolutions of necessary 
ideas ; and the moral value of a strong mathematical 
discipline has, in this view, never been adequately esti- 
mated. By no other means could the mind be so 
effectively apprised of the distinct existence, the firm- 
ness, and the stern necessity of principles. Mere ele- 
gant literature would leave it in a mire of outward con- 
ventionalisms, a mere aesthetic worker among the flux- 
ing matter of forms, incapable of a strong philosophic 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 89 

reflection^ and quite as much of those sallies into 
the ideal world which nerve the highest ranges of 
poetry. If, besides, the exact sciences are found to 
reign, as they do, over the great realm of nature and 
physical science, and the popular mind sees them sym- 
bolized to view, in all visible existence, then will a new 
and more forcible impression of what law and principle 
are, become universal. Looking up to the heavens and 
beholding all the innumerable orbs and powers of the 
universe obedient to ideal laws, and revolving in forms 
of the mind ; seeing the earth crystallize into shapes of 
ideal exactness and necessity, and the very atoms of the 
globe yoke themselves under the mental laws of arith- 
metic ; seeing, in a word, the whole compact of creation 
bedded in ideal truth, and yielding to the iron laws of 
necessity, it becomes impossible not to feel some new 
impression of the rigidity of moral principle, as a law 
of the mind, its distinct existence, its immutable obliga- 
tion. 

Next- you will observe, as if to carry on these impres- 
sions and make them practical, that as society advances, 
public law becomes a rigid science, and the rights of so- 
ciety are subjected to the stern arbitrament of justice. 
Public law is moral. It is the public reason, revolving 
about the one great principle of right, and constructing 
a science of moral justice. Executive power, with all 
its splendid prerogatives, is seen withdrawing to make 
room for a higher law; even right. Tribunals of jus- 
tice are erected and made independent. They are to 
sit clothed with the sacred majesty of right. Their ad- 

8- 



90 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

judications are to be stern decrees of Nemesis, declara- 
tions of exact, scientific justice between the parties. 
This at least is the theory of public litigation ; and if it 
should happen that actual justice is dispensed as seldom 
as the most caustic satirists of the law pretend, still it is 
a thing of inestimable consequence that justice should 
be thus impersonated among men. It is a solemn con- 
cession to the supremacy of right, such as helps to im- 
press a cultivated people with a new sense of the im- 
partial authority of reason and principle. 

If now a condition of civil liberty be achieved (and 
this, we know, belongs to the advanced stages of his- 
tory) the tone of moral obligation will be strengthened 
in a yet higher degree. Liberty is literally freedom 
from constraint, according to the manner of intoxica- 
tion ; and it must be confessed that in those great up- 
heavings and revolutions, by which the shackles of un- 
just dominion have been burst asunder, the constraints 
of order and the barriers of law have too often been ut- 
terly swept away. The Liberty worshiped is true son 
of Liber, rightly named, as some of the witty ancients 
may have thought, from the stout old god of the vine. 
He goes forth, over hill and dale, drawn by his father's 
lions, brandishing the wrathful thyrsus, boasting his 
new inventions, and filling the people's heads with the 
strong wine of democracy, till sense and reason are 
crazed by its fumes. But the sober hour comes after, 
and then it will be found that the individual has 
emerged from under the masses in which he lay buried 
— a person, a distinct man, a subject of law, an eternal 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 91 

subject of God. Discharged from the constraints of 
force, he is free to meet the responsibilities of virtue, 
and he stands out sole and uncovered before the smok- 
ing mount of the conscience, to receive its law. The 
very doctrine of liberty, too, when it finds a doctrine, 
will be that force put upon the conscience or the reason, 
is sacrilege. Conscience, it will declare, is no other 
than the sacred throne of Grod, which no power or po- 
tentate may dare to touch. Mounting thus above all 
human prerogative to set its own stern limits and hold 
back the strong hand of power, as in these latter ages 
it is beginning to do, how high is the reach of con- 
science seen to be, how mighty its grasp, how impartial 
its reign ! 

I have thus alluded, as briefly as I could, to three or 
four stages or incidents in the progress of history which 
make it clear that the moral tone of the conscience must 
be ever advancing in power and clearness. 

Pass on now to the outward code of virtue, that which 
regulates her conduct and forms of action. Though 
there is no merit or demerit, nothing right or wrong, in 
any outward conduct as such, still the interests of virtue 
are deeply involved in the perfection of the outward 
code. The internal life of virtue can neither propagate 
its power nor diffuse its blessings, except through the 
outward state. Furthermore, as expression always in- 
vigorates what is expressed, and as the outward reacts 
on the inward by a sovereign influence, it becomes a 
matter of the highest consequence, as regards the inter- 



92 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

nal health of virtue, that she should have her outward 
code complete and, withou.t exception, beautiful. 

Accordingly there is a work of progressive legislation 
continually going forward, by which the moral code is 
perfecting itself. This code, as outward, is no fixed 
immutable thing, as many suppose. Custom is its in- 
terpreter, and it grows up in the same way as the com- 
mon or civil law, or the law merchant, by a constant 
process of additions and refinements. Life itself is an 
open court of legislation, where reasonings, opinions, 
wants, injuries, are ever drawing men into new senses 
of duty and extending the laws of society, to suit the 
demands of an advanced state of being. All art and 
beauty, every thing that unfolds the power of outward 
criticism, enters into this progress. So does Christian 
love, which is ever seeking, as the great apostle per- 
ceives, to execute its spirit, in the most perfect forms of 
conduct. As when he prays — That your love may 
abound yet more and more in all knowledge and judg- 
ment [oLKf^TfCfig^ aesthetic discernment] that ye may ap- 
prove things that are excellent. 

Moral legislation is, in fact, one of the highest inci- 
dents of our existence. Not that man here legislates, 
but God through man ; for it is not by any will of man, 
that reason, experience and custom are ever at work to 
make new laws and refine upon the old ; these are to 
God as an ever smoking Sinai under his feet, and, if 
there be much of dissonance and seeming confusion in 
the liloudy mount of custom, we may yet distinguish 
the sound of the trumpet, and the tables of stone, we 



THE GROWTH OF LAW 93 

shall see in due time, distinctly written, as by no human 
finger. Laws will emerge from the experience of life, 
and get power to command us. 

Let us not seem, in this view, to strike at the immuta- 
bility of virtue. "We have no such thought. The law 
of virtue is immutable and eternal, above all expedi- 
ency or self-interest; all change, circumstance, power, 
and plan; necessary as God, necessary even to God. 
But the substance of virtue lies, as we have said, in no 
outward forms of conduct, and it is only these that are 
subject to modification. Thus there is such a thing as 
time, and time is ever the same thing in its nature. 
But where is time ? Not in the sun, not in the dial, 
not in the clock or watch ; or, if there, it is as much 
everywhere else. Time is ideal, a thing of the mind. 
But, though time is nowhere in the outward world, it 
has its signs and measures there, and what matter is it if 
they are changed? that does not affect the immutable 
nature of time. Measured by the sun, the moon, the 
hour-glass, the clock or watch, the flight of birds or the 
opening of flowers, time is still the same. So it is with 
virtue; it is the same unchanging, eternal principle, 
though its outward code of manifestation has variety 
and progress. 

Neither let us seem to impugn the authority of the 
revelation. The statutes of revealed law may be di- 
vided into two classes. First the class comprising such 
as are given for their inherent beneficence ; the points 
of the decalogue, for example, and the golden rule of 
the New Testament ; which, being the want of all ages, 



94 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

are to be drawn out farther and farther in their ramifi- 
cations and refinements, and be the staple, as it were, 
of a complete moral code. Secondly the class compris- 
ing permissive statutes, like the license given by Moses 
to buy slaves of the nations round about; which, as 
they impose no obligation, have no permanent . signifi- 
cance, except in showing that slavery is not inherently 
and in all cases and ages a necessary wrong ; also ordi- 
nances of things useful at the time, but liable to be su- 
perseded — as for example sacrifices and ritual observ- 
ances ; also commands that get their fitness and propri- 
ety from the present condition or custom of societ}^' — 
such as the law against taking interest for the loan of 
money, and that forbidding a woman to appear in pub- 
lic having her head uncovered; also mandates given 
for retribution's sake, like the ^^ statutes not good" of 
which the prophet spake; also permissions and com- 
mands, not because they are the best, but because they 
are the best that a crude-minded, wild, or half-barba- 
rous people can appreciate enough to accept as obliga- 
tory, or the best which can be enjoined without provok- 
ing results of barbarity worse than the mischiefs tempo- 
rarily allowed — of which I may give as example the 
silent permissions of polygamy, and the law permitting 
husbands to put away their wives by a divorce which 
is their own act ; a law which Christ himself declares 
was given " because of the hardness of their hearts ;" 
that is to save the hapless wives from being dispatched 
by a more summary method. 

I have made this exact and rather tedious specifica- 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 95 

tion, just to save the doctrine I wish to assert from the 
imputation of a trespass on the sacred authority of scrip- 
ture. You perceive, as regards the first class of stat- 
utes, that they are going, by the supposition, directly 
into the great mill of human casuistries, to be refined 
upon, run out into subtle applications more and more 
distinct from the crude applications of the early times, 
and so to be roots of a vast codified system of ethics. 
And the work will be going on for ages, ripening 
slowly and by imperceptible degrees. Thus, for exam- 
ple, it is a very simple thing to say — ^" Thou shalt not 
steal," — ^but the growth of society, property, and mer- 
cantile law, will raise thousands of questions where the 
sharpest perception will distinguish, with much diffi- 
culty, precisely what is and is not included under the 
principle of the law. 

As regards the whole second class, manifold and va- 
rious as it is, you will see that modifications, discontin- 
uances, and even contrary rules of practice, are, by the 
supposition, possible, and likely to appear. They are 
such as are casual in their very nature, appropriate only 
to the present time, and a great part of them such as 
belong to the crudity and the barbarous perceptions 
and manners of an early stage of society. For nothing 
is more plain, than that a barbarous people could not 
receive a perfectly beautiful code of conduct. Is it any- 
thing new, that if you give a clown directions how to 
execute a beautiful painting, he could not even take the 
sense of the directions? or, if you should give him a 
full code of politeness, that he could not enter into its 



96 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

terms? But how vast in compass, and multifarious in 
number, and complicated in form, are the rules of a 
perfect code of life, compared with the strokes of a 
painter's art, or the items of a polite conduct ! What 
scope is there here for criticism ! what exactness of dis- 
cipline does it require, only to imderstand what is wise. 
or useful, or fair, in all cases, even when it is revealed ! 
What sharpness of taste, only to discriminate or con- 
ceive all beautiful actions, when expressly commanded 
— greater, by far, than any nation as yet possesses ! 

Neither let us wonder, if it takes many ages to clear 
the moral code of all barbarous anomalies, and bring it 
to a full maturity. Experience must have a long and 
painful discipline, philosophy must go down into the 
grounds of things, rights must be settled, letters ad- 
vanced, the beautiful arts come into form ; God must 
wait on the creature, and conduct him on through long 
ages of mistake and crudity — command, reason, try, 
enlighten, brood, as over chaos, by his quickening 
power — and then it will be only by slow degrees that 
the moral taste of the world will approximate to a co- 
incidence with the perfect moral taste of God. 

Let us now see if facts will justify our reasonings. 
Far back, in the remotest ages of definite history, we 
find one of the world's patriarchs so fortunate or unfor- 
tunate as to be the inventor of wine, by which he is 
buried in the excesses of intoxication, we know not 
how many times, with no apparent compunction. Say- 
ing nothing of abstinence, not even the law of temper- 
ance had yet been reached. Another, who is called the 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 9 



i-r 



*' father of the faithful," has not yet so refined upon the 
moral statute against lying, as to see that prevarication 
is to be accounted a lie. Accordingly, he more than 
once, shows his ingenuity in a practice on words, with 
no apparent sense of wrong. A successor, in equal 
honor as a religious man, deceives his blind father by a 
trick of disguise, and steals the blessing of his brother. 
He takes advantage also of this brother's hunger to ex- 
tort his birthright from him — acts which in our day 
would cover him with infamy. These were all holy 
men. It was not so much sin as barbarism, that mar- 
red their history. These instances of unripe morality 
furnish no ground of cavil against the Scriptures, but, 
to all reasoning minds, they are the strongest evidences 
of their real antiquity and truth. I have not time to 
lead you through the Jewish history. The remarkable 
fact in it is, that, with so high notions of the principle, 
the outward style of virtue is yet so harsh, so visibly 
barbarous. You seem to be in a raw physical age, 
where force and sensualism and bigotry of descent dis- 
play their odious and unlovely presence, even in men 
of the highest worth and dignity. As you approach 
the later age of their literature and history, you per- 
ceive a visible mitigation of its features. Christianity 
then appears. The old outward regimen of beggarly 
elements is swept away, new precepts of benevolence 
and forbearance are given, the Jew is lost in the man, 
and the man becomes a brother of his race. How sub- 
lime the contrast, then, of Genesis and John ! 

What we see, in this glance at sacred histor}^, is 

9 



98 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

quite as conspicuous in the general review of humanity. 
The moral code of a savage people has always some- 
thing to distinguish it as a savage people's code. So 
with that of a civilized. The very changes and inven- 
tions of society necessitate an amplification and often a 
revision, of the moral code. Every new state, office, 
art, and thing must have its law. The old law maxim, 
cuilihet in sua arte credendum esf^ every trade must be 
suffered to make its law, is only half the truth — every 
trade will make its law. If bills of exchange are in- 
vented, if money is coined, if banks are established, and 
offices of insurance, if great corporate investments are 
introduced into the machinery of business, it will not 
be long before a body of moral opinions will be genera- 
ted, and take the force of law over these new creations. 
Fire-arms also, printing, theatres, distilled spirits, cards, 
dice, medicine, all new products and inventions, must 
come under moral maxims and create to themselves a 
new moral jurisprudence. The introduction of popular 
liberty makes the subject a new man, lays upon him new 
duties, which require to be set forth in new maxims of 
morality. Already have I shown you, in these brief 
glances, a new world created for the dominion of law. 
And what was said of the human body, growing up to 
maturity, is equally true of the great social body : — 

"For nature crescent does not grow alone, 
In thews and bulk, but as this temple waxes, 
The inward service of the mind and heart 
Grows wide withal." 

I also hinted, that new arts and inventions must often 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 99 

SO change the relations of old things and practices, as to 
require a revision of their law. The Jew may rightly 
take his interest money now, for other reasons than be- 
cause the Mosaic polity is dissolved. He is not the same 
man that his fathers were. He lives in a new world, 
and sustains new relations. The modes of business, too, 
are all so changed by the credit system, which makes a 
capital of character, that the merits of receiving interest 
money are no more the same, although the mere out- 
ward act is such as to be described in the same words. 
At this very moment, we have it on hand to revise the 
moral code in refierence to three very important subjects 
— wine, slavery, and war. The real question, on these 
subjects, if we understood ourselves, is not, on one side, 
whether we can torture the Scripture so as to make it 
condemn all that we desire to exclude; nor, on the 
other, whether we are bound, for all time, and eternity 
to boot, to justify what the Scripture has sometim^e 
suffered. But the question, philosophically stated, is, 
whether new cognate inventions and uses, do not make 
old practices more destructive, old vices more incura- 
ble ; whether a new age of the world and a capacity of 
better things, have not so changed the relations of the 
practices in issue, that they are no longer the same, and 
no longer to be justified. Physically speaking, it is the 
same act to go into a certain house, and to go into it 
having a contagious disease — not morally. Physically 
speaking, it is the same act to go into it having a con- 
tagious disease, and to go into it when the inmates have 
found a new medicine which is proof against the conta- 



100 THE GROWTPI OF LAW. 

gion — not morally. In this view, it is nothing to say 
that wine-drinking is restrained in the Scripture by no 
law but temperance ; for the neighborhood of distilled 
liquors, a modern invention, makes it no longer the 
same thing, but a thing so different that abstinence, 
possibly, is the only adequate rule of beneficent prac- 
tice. This, precisely, is the question we are now litigat- 
ing. In the same way, since the mitigation of the war- 
state of nations, and the extended sense of fraternity 
between them, have widened the basis of moral ideas, 
human slavery is no longer to be justified by ancient 
examples ; for the advanced sentiment of the world, 
under Christianity, makes it capable of a better and 
juster practice. In this manner the moral import of 
actions, physically the same, is thus ever changing, and 
no reform is bad, because it requires a revision of law ; 
for the change of condition, wrought by time, may be 
so great as to render the former law inapplicable. It is 
conceivable that even a positive statute of revelation 
may lose its applicability, by reason of a radical change 
in the circumstances it was designed to cover. Nor 
can it properly be said that such a statute is repealed — 
it is only waiting for the circumstances in which its 
virtue lay. A new rule contradictory to it in words, 
may yet be wholly consistent with it, and bring no re- 
flection on its merits. Accordingly, in what are called 
reforms, the real problem more frequently is to revise or 
mitigate law, perhaps to legislate anew. And there is no 
evil in the human state, nothing opposed to the general 
good and happiness, which can not be lawed out of ex- 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 101 

istence by an adequate appeal to truth and reason, 
which are God's highest law. Nothing, I will add, 
which shall not thus be lawed oiit of existence. 

Thus it is within the memory of persons now living, 
that a clergyman of England, specially distinguished 
for his piety, forsook the slave trade, by compulsion of 
Providence, and not because of any Christian scruples 
concerning it. Night and morning he sent up his 
prayers to God, blended with the groans of his captives, 
and had his Christian peace among the lacerated limbs 
and the unpitied moans of as many as his ship could 
hold. In ow a law is matured against this traffic, and 
the man is a monster who engages in it. And if you 
will see the progress of the moral code, you may take 
your map and trace the exact countries which this new 
law has reached, just as you may trace, from an emi- 
nence, the shadows of the clouds, as they sail over a 
landscape. 

If you will see the work of moral legislation on a 
scale yet more magnificent, jou have only to advert to 
what is called the international code. I know of noth- 
ing which better marks the high moral tone of modern 
history, than that this sublime code of law should have 
come into form and established its authority over the civ- 
ilized world within so short a time ; for it is now scarce- 
ly more than two hundred years since it took its being. 
In the most polished and splendid age of Greece and 
Grecian philosophy, piracy was a lawful and even hon- 
orable occupation. Man, upon the waters, and the 
shark, in them, had a common right to feed on what 

9* 



102 THE GROWTH OF LAW, 

they could subdue. Nations were considered as natu- 
ral enemies, and for one people to plunder another, bj 
force of arms, and to lay their country waste, was no 
moral wrong, any more than for the tiger to devour 
the lamb. In war, no terms of humanity were binding; 
and the passions of the parties were mitigated by po 
constraints of law. Captives were butchered or sold 
into slavery at pleasure. In time of peace, it was not 
without great hazard that the citizen of one country 
could venture into another for purposes of travel or 
business. 

Go now with me to a little French town near Paris, 
and there you shall see in his quiet retreat, a silent, 
thoughtful man bending his ample shoulders and more 
ample countenance over his table, and recording with a 
visible earnestness something that deeply concerns the 
world. This man has no office or authority to make 
him a lawgiver, other than what belongs to the gifts of 
his own person — a brilliant mind, enriched by the am- 
plest stores of learning, and nerved by the highest prin- 
ciples of moral justice and Christian piety. He is, in 
fact, a fugitive and an exile from his country, separated 
from all power but the simple power of truth and rea- 
son. But he dares, you will see, to write De Jure Belli 
et Pads. This is the man who was smuggled out of 
prison and out of his country, by his wife, in a box 
that was used for much humbler purposes, to give law 
to all the nations of mankind in all future ages. On 
the sea and on the land, on all seas and all lands, he 
s^all bear swav. In the silence of his study, he 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 103 

stretches forth the scepter of law over all potentates and 
peoples, defines their rights, arranges their intercourse, 
gives them terms of war and terms of peace, which 
they may not disregard. In the days of battle, too, 
when kings and kingdoms are thundering in the shock 
of arms, this same Hugo Grotius shall be there, in all 
the turmoil of passion and the smoke of ruin, as a pre- 
siding throne of law, commanding above the command- 
ers, and, when the day is cast, prescribing to the victor 
terms of mercy and justice, which not even his hatred 
of the foe, or the exultation of the hour, may dare to 
transcend. 

The system of commercial law, growing out of the 
extension of trade and commerce, in modern times, is 
another triumph of moral legislation almost equally sub- 
lime with the international. The science of municipal 
law, too, has not been less remarkable for its progress. 
Saying nothing of the common law, or law of England, 
which is, in a sense, the child of the civil or Eoman 
law, what mind can estimate the moral value and power 
of this latter code, extended, as its sway now is, over 
nine-tenths of the civilized world ! 

Now all these systems of law, international, commer- 
cial and civil, are founded in the natural reasons of the 
moral code, and are, in fact, results of moral legislation. 
Considered, too, as accumulations of moral judgment, 
elaborated in the lapse of ages, they constitute a body 
of science, when taken together, compared with which 
every other work of man is insignificant. No other 
has cost such infinite labor and patience, none has em- 



104 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

bodied such a stupendous array of talent, none has 
brought into contribution so much of impartial reason 
or constructed such libraries of scientific learning. 

Under these extensions of law, the world has become 
another world. Anarchy and absolute will are put 
aside to suffer the dominion of justice. The nations 
are become, to a great extent, one empire. The citizen 
of one country may travel and trade securely in almost 
every other. Wars are mitigated in ferocity, and so 
far is the moral sentiment of the world advanced in this 
direction, that military preparations begin to look for- 
mal and wear the semblance of an antiquated usage. 
We may almost dare to say as Pandulph to Lewis, and 
with a much higher sense : — 

" Therefore, thy threatening colors now wmd up 
And tame the savage spirit of wik^ war, 
That, like a lion fostered up at hand. 
It may lie gently, at the foot of peaee. 
And be no further harmful than in show." 

Who shall think it incredible that this same progress 
of moral legislation, which has gone thus far in the in- 
ternational code, may ultimately be so far extended 
as to systematize and establish rules of arbitrament, by 
which all national disputes shall be definitely settled, 
without an appeal to arms ! An(J so it shall result that, 
as the moral code is one, all law shall come into unity, 
and a kind of virtual oneness embrace all nations. We 
shall flow together in the annihilation of distances and 
become brothers in the terms of justice. And so shall 
that sublime declaration of Cicero, in bis Eepublic, 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 105 

where he sets forth the theoretic unity of law, find a re- 
.public of nations, where it shall have a more than theo- 
retic verity: — ^'JSTec erit alia lex Eomae, alia Athenis, 
alia nunc, aha posthac, sed et omnes gentes, et omni 
tempore, et sempiterna, et immortalis continebit, unus- 
que erit communis quasi magister et imperator omnium 
Deus. lUe legis hujus inventor, disceptator, lator!" 

I have thus endeavored to show that, as virtue is 
two-fold, so there is a two-fold law of progress by which 
it is advanced in human society — one by which the in- 
ward principle invigorates its tone, another by which 
its outward code is extended and made to accord more 
nicely with the highest beaiity and the most perfect 
health of virtue. Both lines of progress have been ac- 
tive up to this time, with results as definitely marked 
as the progress of history itself. What now is to come? 
By what future events and changes shall the work go 
on to its completion ? 

That must be unknown to us, though the present 
momentum of society is enough, by itself, to assure us 
in what line the future motion must proceed. There 
are, at the same time, three great forces in this motion, 
which we know are incapable of exhaustion. These 
must always work on together, as they have done up 
to this time, to assist the triumph of the moral element. 
Other forces have entered into history, such as the 
Gothic irruptions, the crusades, the feudal system, the 
free cities and their commerce, which, being more 
nearly physical, lose their distinct existence as soon as 



106 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

ihej are incorporate, and are manifested only by their 
ces Lilts. Not so with, the three of which I am to speak 
—they belong to all future time, and will never cease 
iheir distinct activity. These three are the Greek, the 
Roman and the Christian training. The Greek, as be- 
longing to the outward department of virtue and assist- 
ing it by the high aesthetic discipline of its literature. 
The Eoman, as asserting the ideal law of virtue and 
giving it a corporate embodiment. The Christian, as 
descending from heaven to pour itself into both, 
quicken their activity and bring them into earnest con- 
nection with a government above. 

The first thing to be observed in the Greek character 
and literature, is its want of a moral tone. A mere in- 
cidental remark of Schlegel touches what might rather 
be made the staple of criticism, in the works of this 
wonderful people. ''Even in those cases," he says, 
" where the most open expression of deep feeling, moral- 
it}^, or conscience, might have been expected, the Greek 
authors are apt to view the subject of which they treat, 
as a mere appearance of the life, with a certain perfect, 
undisturbed, and elaborate equability." How could it 
be otherwise, where an Aristotle, endowed with the 
most gigantic and powerful intellect ever given to man, 
could only -define virtue itself as the middle point be- 
tween two extremes, and every moral evil as being 
either too much or too little ? Socrates and his splen- 
did disciple, it is true, had a warmer and more adequate 
idea of virtue ; though it will escape the notice of no 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 107 

thoughtful scholar, that they were charmed with virtue, 
rather as the Fair than as the Eight. This is specially 
true of Plato. He draws her forth out of his own intel- 
lectual beauty, as Pygmalion his ivory statue, and, as 
this was quickened into life by the word of Venus, so 
his notion of virtue takes its life from the charms in 
which it is invested. Evil and vice, too, connect, in 
his mind, rather with deformity and mortification than 
with remorse. 

On the whole, there is almost no civilized people 
whose morality is more earthly and cold than that of 
the Greeks. At the same time, their sense of beauty in 
forms, their faculty of outward criticism, is perfect. 
Their temples and statutes are forms of perfect art. 
Their poets and philosophers chisel their thoughts into 
groups of marble. Their religion or mythology is 
scarcely more than a gallery of artistic shapes, exquis- 
itely sensual. They alone, of all people, in fact, have 
a religion without a moral; gods for the zest of com- 
edy; gay divinities that go hunting, frolicking and 
thundering over sea and land. Genius only worships. 
The chisel is the true incense, to hold a place in epic 
machinery, the true circle of Providence. Everything 
done or written is subtle, etherial, beautiful, and cold ; 
even the fire is cold — a combustion of icicles. There 
can be no true heat where there is no moral life. They 
love their country, but they do not love it well enough 
to suffer justice to be done in it, or to endure the pres- 
ence of virtue. Their bravery is cunning, their patriot- 
ism an elegant selfishness. In their ostracism, they 



108 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

make public envy a public right, and faction constitu- 
tional. We look up and down their history, survey 
their temples without a religion, their streets lined 
with chiseled divinities, set up for ornamental effect, we 
listen to their orators, we open the shining rolls of 
their literature, and exclaim, beautiful lust! splendid 
sensuality ! elegant faction ! gods for the sake of orna- 
ment ! a nation perfect in outward criticism, but blind, 
as yet, to the real nature and power of the moral ideas. 
And yet this people have done a work, in their way, 
which is even essential to the triumph of virtue. Their 
sense of beauty, their nice discriminations of art and 
poetic genius, are contributions made to the outward 
life and law of virtue. A barbarous people, like the 
wild African or Indian, vou will observe, have no sense 
of form, and their moral code will, for that reason, be a 
crude and shapeless barbarism. To mature the code of 
action, therefore, and finish its perfect adaptation to the 
expression of virtue and the ornament of life, requires 
a power of form or of outward criticism, in full devel- 
opment. Considered in this view, it is impossible to 
overrate the value of the Greek art A whole depart- 
ment of human capacity, the talent of forms or of out- 
ward criticism and expression, must be the disciple of 
Greece to the end of the world. This same Greek 
beauty, which can never perish, will go into the Eoman 
life, and assist in that process of legal criticism by 
which the civil law shall be matured. Then it will go 
into the wild Gothic liberty that is thundering, as yet, 
along the Baltic and through the plains of Scythia, to 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 109 

humanize it, and make the element of liberty an ele- 
ment of order and virtue. It will breathe a spirit of 
beauty into every language and literature of every civ- 
ilized people ; and their intellectual and moral life will 
crystallize into the forms of beauty thus evolved, lose 
their opacity, and become transparent to the light of 
reason and law. The Christian faith, too, whose pre- 
rogative it is to make all the works both of man and of 
God subservient to its honor, will take to itself all the 
beauty of all the Greeks and make it the beauty of 
holiness. 

We come now to the Eomans, a people of as high 
originality as the Greeks, though not so regarded by 
the critics, because their originality did not run into the 
forms of literature. The ideal of the Greeks was 
beauty, that of the Eomans law and scientific justice. 
We need not suffer the common wonder, therefore, that 
all the ambition of the Roman scholars, aided by hordes 
of emigi^ant rhetoricians, could not reproduce the Gre- 
cian classic spirit in that people ; for whatsoever power 
of outward criticism was awakened, followed after the 
Roman ideal, going to construct the moral rigors of the 
Stoic philosophy and fashion the sublime structure of 
civil jurisprudence. And Greece was as incapable of 
the Roman law, as Rome of the Grecian literature. 
Which of the two has made the greatest and most orig- 
inal gift to the future ages, it will ever be impossible to 
judge. 

It was a distinction of the Roman people, that they 
had a strong sense of moral principle. They could feel 

10 



110 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

the authority of what some call an abstraction, and 
sujffer its rigid sway. Their conscience had the tone of 
a trumpet in their bosoms. This was owing, in part, 
we may believe, to their martial discipline ; for it is a 
peculiarity of this, that it bends to nothing in the indi- 
vidual, his interest, comfort, or safety. It is as desti- 
tute of feeling as an abstraction, and accommodates the 
soldier to the absolute sway of rigid law. Accustomed 
to the stiff harness of discipline, to be moved by the 
unbending laws of mechanism up to the enemy's face 
and the bristling points of defense, there to live or die, 
as it may happen, without any right to consider which; 
a nation of soldiers learns how to suffer an absolute 
rule, and, if the other and more corrupt influences of 
war do not prevent, is prepared, with greater facility, 
to acknowledge the stern ideal law of virtue. 

The Eomans, too, had a religion, a serious and pow- 
erful faith, gods that kept their integrity and held a re- 
lation to the conscience. Even Mars himself, their tu- 
telary deity, in so far as he was a Eoman and not a 
Greek, was, on the whole, a much better Christian than 
some who have presided in Eome, with quite other 
pretensions; as will scarcely be thought extravagant 
hj the scholar, who duly considers, with what rever- 
ence they guarded the sacred ancile let fall from heaven 
to be the pledge of their safety ; or compares the pro- 
cessions of the Salii, with others of a more recent date 
and of a different name. It was also a beautiful dis- 
tinction of the religious character of this people, that 
they alone, of all heathen nations, erected temples to 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. Ill 

the mere ideals of virtue — Faith, Concord, Modesty, 
Peace. 

The Eomans, also, were an agricultural people, nam- 
ing their noble families after the hean^ the pea^ the len- 
tik, vetches^ and other plants; retaining the sobriety, 
frugality, and all the rigid virtues of a life in the fields. 
These are the people to suffer a censorship, in which 
every licentious and effeminate habit shall expose the 
subject to a public degradation ; the only people, I will 
add, that has ever existed, capable of such a discipline. 

Pass out with me, now, into the Tusculan country, 
and I will show you one of these old Puritans. A 
simple rustic house is before you, the house of a small 
country farmer. A man with red hair, and a pair of 
grey eyes twinkling imder his fiery eyebrows, a muscu- 
lar, iron-faced man meets you at the gate. This man 
will boast his dinner as a triumph of economy — bread 
baked by his wife, and turnips boiled by himself Of 
pleasure he is ignorant. He keeps a few slaves, whom 
he turns away when they become old ; for it is his way 
to make a rigid abstraction even of the principle of 
economy. In the morning he rises early, and goes 
forth into the neighboring towns to plead causes. He 
returns, in the afternoon, puts on his frock, and goes 
out to work among the slaves. He is a man of wit, 
and is to be called the Eoman Demosthenes. He is to 
be a great commander, and a part of his prowess will 
be that he spends nothing on himself and makes the 
army pay its way by its victories. He will reap the 
honors of a triumph, he will be consul, he will be cen- 



112 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

sor. And when Oato is censor, woe to the man who 
has defrauded the treasury ! every man than gets over 
the line of sober drink ! every high liver ! every dandy ! 
Then, to crown all, this man shall say — for he loves to 
carry out a principle — that ^^he had rather hig good ac- 
tions should go unrewarded, than his bad ones unpun- 
ished." Inexorable, in whatever relates to public jus- 
tice, inflexibly rigid in the execution of his orders, he 
will make history confess, that the Eoman government 
had never before appeared, either so awful or so 
amiable. 

Eoman virtue, therefore, became a proverb, to denote 
that strength of principle, which can bend to no outward 
obstacle or seduction. And the pitch of public virtue 
displayed by this people, especially in the days of the 
ancient republic, is one of the greatest moral phenomena 
of history. Always warlike in their habit, inured to 
scenes of devastation and blood, ambitious for their city 
and ignorant of any right in the world but the imperial 
right of Eome, they were, at the same time, careless of 
pleasure and of wealth, stoics in fortitude and self-denial, 
immovable in conjugal fidelity, reverent to parents, in- 
capable of treachery to their country or disobedience to 
the laws, exact and even superstitious in the rites of 
piety. Unjust to every other people, they were yet the 
firm adherents of law and justice among themselves. 
They went to war with religious preliminaries. The 
military oath was their sacrament^ in which they engaged 
for a real presence ; and though it was to be a presence 
in veritable blood, it was yet so religiously fulfilled as 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 113 

to be a bond of virtue. They, at first, sent forth their 
legions to make war, more, it would seem, because they 
loved the discipline, than because they wanted the 
plunder. The tramp of their victorious legions was 
heard resounding at the gates of cities and across the 
borders of nations ; their leaders were returning, every 
few months, with triumphal entries into the city, that a 
most just people might enjoy and glory in the spectacle 
of their own public wrongs ; till at last, debauched by 
the plunder of their victories, they may be said to have 
conquered, on the same day, both the world and their 
own virtue together. Nor is even this exactly true ; 
for it is remarkable, that they gave back to the subject 
nations the justice denied them in their conquest, and 
set up the tribunals of Eoman law on the fields of Eo- 
man lawlessness ! Equally remarkable is it, that in the 
most dissolute age of the empire, the power of scientific 
law could not be eradicated from the hearts of this 
wonderful people. While the monster Commodus sits 
upon the throne, Papinian and Ulpian occupy the 
bench, adding to the civil code the richest contributions 
of legal science ! And even the signatures of Caracalla 
and his ministers will be found, not seldom, inscribed 
on the purest materials of the Pandects ! 

What, then, if Eome did not excel in literature? 
Had she not another talent in her bosom quite as rich 
and powerful, the sublime talent of law ? In her civil 
code, she has erected the mightiest monument of reason 
and of moral power that has ever yet been raised by 
human genius. The honest pride of Cicero was not 

10* 



114: THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

misplaced, wiien lie said: *'How admirable is the wis- 
dom of our ancestors! We alone are masters of civil 
prudence, and our superiority is the more conspicuous, 
if we deign to cast our eyes on the rude and almost ri- 
diculous jurisprudence of Draco, Solon and Lycurgus." 
Little, however, did he understand, when he thus spake, 
what gift his country was here preparing for the human 
race. Could he have pierced the magnificent future, 
when this same Roman law should have its full scien- 
tific embodiment ; could he have seen, at the distance 
of twenty centuries, the barbarians of northern and 
western Europe compacted into great civilized nations, 
and, after having vanquished the Eoman arms and em- 
pire, all quietly sheltered under the Eoman jurispru- 
dence ; a new continent rising to view, beyond the lost 
Atlantis, to be fostered in its bosom ; a spirit of law in- 
fused into the whole realm of civilized mind and reveal- 
ing its energy now in the common law of England, now 
in the commercial code, and, last of all, in the interna- 
tional — all matured in the pervading light and warmth 
of the Eoman; liberty secured by the security of jus- 
tice ; the fire of the old Eoman virtue burning still in 
the bosom of legal science and imparting a character of 
intellectual and moral gravity to the literature, opinions 
and life of all cultivated nations ; and then, to crown 
the whole, the visible certainty that the Eoman law has 
only just begun its career, that it must enter more* and 
more ^ddely into the fortunes of the race and extend 
its benign sway wherever law extends, till the globe, 
with all its peoples, becomes a second Eoman empire, 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 115 

and time itself the only date of its sovereignty ; — seeing 
all this, the great orator must have confessed, that every 
conception he had before entertained of the majesty and 
grandeur of the Eoman jurisprudence, was weak enough 
to be scarcely better than null. Our minds, even now, 
can but faintly conceive the same. 

Such is the moral value of the Greek art and litera- 
ture, such of the Eoman law ; one as a contribution to 
the outward form of virtue, the other to the authority 
and power of the moral sentiment itself. These are 
gifts wrought out from below; extorted, as we may 
say, from society. It remains to speak of a third 
power, descending from above, to bring the Divine Life 
into history and hasten that moral age, towards which 
its lines are ever converging. Hitherto, we have 
spoken of causes developed by the mere laws of soci- 
ety, which laws, however, when deeply sounded, are 
but another name for God, conducting history to its 
ends, by a latent presence of supernatural force. In 
the religion of Christ we are to view him as coming 
into mental contemplation objectively to the intellect 
and heart, and operating thus as a moral cause. In his 
incarnate person descending into the world from a 
point above the world, God shows an external govern 
ment of laws and retributions, connected with the inter- 
nal law of the conscience ; opens worlds of glory and 
pain beyond this life ; presents himself as an object of 
contemplation, fear, love and desire; reveals his own 
infinite excellence and beauty, and, withal, his tender- 



116 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

ness and persuasive goodness ; and so pours the Divine 
Life into the dark and soured bosom of sin. 

But you will perceive that a certain degree of intel- 
lectual refinement and moral advancement was neces- 
sary to make the approach of so great excellence and 
beauty intelligible. A race of beings immersed in the 
wild superstitions of fetichism could not receive the di- 
vine. And, therefore, it was not till the Greek letters 
and the Eoman sovereignty were extended through the 
world, that Jesus Christ made his appearance. He is, 
at once, the Perfect Beauty and the Eternal Eule of 
God ; the Life of God manifested under the conditions 
of humanity; by sufferings, expressing the Love of 
God ; by love, attracting man to his breast. Now there 
enters into human history a divine force which is not 
latent. The law from within meets the objective real- 
ity and beauty of God from without ; conscience links 
with a government above, and morality is taken up 
into the bosom of religion. 

I will not trace the historical action of Christianity, 
or show how it has subordinated and wrought in all 
other causes, such as I have named. Every one knows 
that this new religion, sprung of so humble a begin- 
ning, has had force enough, somehow, to take the rule 
of human society for the last eighteen hundred years. 
Ancient learning, ancient customs and religions, emi- 
grations, wars and diplomacies, all the foundations of 
thrones and the bulwarks of empire, have floated, as 
straws, on this flood. And now it is much to say, that 
where we are, thither Christianity has borne us, and 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 117 

what we are in art, literature, commerce, law and lib- 
erty, Christianity, appropriating all previous advances, 
has made us. 

I will only point you, beside, to a single sj^mptom of 
the times, which shows yon whither human history is 
going. It is a remarkable distinction of the present 
era, that we are deriving rules of common life and obli- 
gation from considerations of beneficence. We per- 
ceive that the internal law of the conscience includes 
not only justice but love. The spirit of Christianity, 
as revealed in the life of Jesus, has so far infused itself 
into human bosoms, that we feel bound to act, not as 
fellow men, but as brothers to the race. "We propose 
what is useful, we reason of what is beneficent. Gov- 
ernment, we claim, is a trust for the equal benefit of 
subjects. As individuals we are concluded, in all mat- 
ters, by the necessities of public virtue and happiness. 
All the old rules of morality, which hung upon the cold- 
er principle of justice, are suffering a revision to execute 
the principle of love, and everything in public law and 
private duty is coming to the one test of beneficence. 

Here I will rest my argument. I undertook to show 
you that human history ascends from the phj^sical to 
the moral, and must ultimately issue in a moral age. I 
first exhibited the fact of a two-fold progress in past 
history, accordant with the two-fold nature of the moral 
code. What stupendous events and overturnings are, 
hereafter, to come pouring their floods into the currents 
of human historv, we can not know or conjecture; but 



118 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

I have brought into view three great moral forces, of 
whose future operation, as of whose past, we may well 
be confident — the Greek Art, the Eoman Law, and the 
Christian Faith. These three being indestructible, in- 
capable of death, must roll on, down the whole future 
of man, and work their effects in his history. And, if 
we are sure of this, we are scarcely less sure of an age 
of law, or of the final ascendency of the intellectual and 
moral life of the race. 

I anticipate no perfect state, such as fills the over- 
heated fancy of certain dreamers. The perfectibility of 
man is forever excluded here, by the tenor of his exist- 
ence. He is here in a flood of successive generations, 
to make experiment of evil, to learn the worth of virtue 
in the loss of it, and by such knowledge be at last con- 
firmed *in it. As long, therefore, as he is here, evil will 
be, and life will be a contest with it. 

But a day will come, when the dominion of ignorance 
and physical force, when distinctions of blood and the 
accidents of fortune, will cease to rule the world. 
Beauty, reason, science, personal worth and religion 
will come into their rightful supremacy, and moral 
forces will preside over physical as mind over the body. 
Liberty and equality will be so far established that 
every man will have a right to his existence, and, if he 
can make it so, to an honorable, powerful and hajopy 
existence. Policy will cease to be the same as cunning, 
and become a study of equity and reason. It is impos- 
sible that wars should not be discontinued, if not by the 
progress of the international code, as we have hinted, 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 119 

yet by the progress of liberty and intelligence ; for the 
masses who have hitherto composed the soldiery, must 
sometime discover the folly of dying, as an ignoble 
herd, to serve the passions of a few reckless politicians, 
or to give a name for prowess to leaders whose bravery 
consists in marching them into danger. The arbitra- 
ment of arms is not a whit less absurd than the old 
English trial by battle, and before the world has done 
rolling, they will both be classed together. Habits of 
temperance must result in a gradual improvement of 
the physical stature and intellectual capacity of the race. 
The enormous expenditures of war and vice being dis- 
continued, and invention, aided by science, having got 
the mastery of nature, so as to make production more 
copious and easy, the laboring classes will be able to 
live in comparatively leisure and elegance, and find 
ample time for self-improvement. 

Now begins the era of genius ; for all the mind there 
is, being brought into action, and that in the best con- 
ditions of intellectual health, it must result that the em- 
inent minds will tower as much higher, as the level 
whence they rise is more elevated. The old leaden at- 
mosphere of a physical age will be displaced by an in- 
tellectual atmosphere, quickening to the breath and full 
of the music of new thoughts. Society being delivered 
of all that is low, and raised to a general condition of 
comfort and beauty, will become a new and more in- 
spiring element. The general peace of nations and the 
nobler peace of virtue, will make the reflective faculty 
as a clear sounding bell in a calm day ; every depth of 



120 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

nature will be sounded and brought into the clear 
light of philosophy. The imagination will be pu- 
rified by the subjection of the passions, and fired 
by the vigor of a faith that sees, in all things visi- 
ble, vehicles of the invisible, in everything finite, a sym- 
bol of infinity. 

But, what is the greatest pre-eminence, it will come 
to pass that, as the ideal of the Greeks was beauty, and 
that of the Eomans law, so this new age shall embrace 
an ideal more comprehensive, as it is higher than all, 
namely, Love. The magnificent genius of Plato at- 
tained to some indistinct conception of this same thing, 
in that intellectual love, so much extolled by him, as 
being the power of all that is divine in virtue — the love 
of kindred souls thirsting after truth, and tracing back 
their way to that bright essence, whose image they 
dimly remember, and which, having cast its shadow on 
them in some previous state, made them forever kindred 
to each other and to it. But the love of which I speak 
is this and more — a love to souls not kindred, a love of 
action and of power, as well as of sentiment and of mu- 
tual affinity. This love is no partial idea, as every 
other must be ; it is universal, it embraces all that is 
beneficent, pure, true, beautiful; God, man; eternity, 
time. To build up, to adorn, to increase enjoyment; 
to receive the whispers of that Original Love which in- 
habits all the heights and depths; to sing out the 
rhythm and eternal harmony of that music wherewith 
it fills, not the stars only, but all the recesses of being; 
to go up into the heights of reason after its plan, and 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 121 

lay the head of philosophy on its bosom ; to weep, re- 
joice and tremble before it, everywhere present, every- 
where warm and luminous, palpitating in all that lives, 
blushing into all that is beautiful, bursting out as a fire, 
in all that is terrible — thus employed, filled with this 
love, as by a storm falling out of heaven, lifted and ce- 
lestially empowered by it, the new moral age must 
needs unfold a regenerated capacity and construct a lit- 
erature, more nearly divine, than has yet been con- 
ceived. All that is great in action, disinterested in 
suftering, strong in the abhorrence of evil, beautiful in 
art, wise in judgment, deep in science — the keen, the 
soft, the wrathful and piercing, as well as the gentle and 
patient — every side and capacity of mind will display 
itself, and as the talent of the Creator unfolds its gran- 
deur in love, so by love, the talent of his creature will 
roll out into that full-toned harmony of act and power 
which constitutes the distinction of genius. 

Brothers in letters, I may not close without some 
reference more personal to ourselves and closer to the 
occasion. We are here, once more, in the classic shades 
where our youthful beginnings were nurtured. We 
most filially venerate and love the place. Nowhere 
else does memory drop the element of tense and be- 
come experience as here. Our youth returns upon us ; 
its day-dreams even are here, as we left them, floating 
on the air and resting in the trees. As now our hearts 
are open to ingenuous feeling, let us take to ourselves 
one more lesson before we part, and resolve to wed 

11 



122 THE GROWTH OF LAW. 

ourselves, unchangeably, to the good of mankind and 
the final triumph of right. 

First of all let us, as scholars, have faith in the fu 
ture. No man was ever inspired through his memory. 
The eye of Genius is not behind. Nor was there ever 
a truly great man, whose ideal was in the past. The 
offal of history is good enough for worms and monks, 
but it will not feed a living man. Power moves in the 
direction of hope. If we can not hope, if we see noth- 
ing so good for history as to reverse it, we shrink from 
the destiny of our race, and the curse of all impotence is 
on us. Legions of men, who dare not set their face the 
way that time is going, are powerless ; you may push 
them back with a straw. They have lost their virility, 
their soul is gone out. They are owls flying towards the 
dawn and screaming, with dazzled eyes, that light should 
invade their prescriptive and congenial darkness. 

Every scholar should be so far imbued with the phi- 
losophic spirit, as to remember that ways and manners, 
which stand well with prescription, do not always stand 
well with reason, and that respectable practice is often 
most respectably assaulted. Suffer no effeminate dis- 
gusts ; neither always be repelled, when a good object 
is maintained by crude and even pernicious arguments. 
Men are often wiser in their ends than in their reasons, 
and, if we see them staggering after the light, our duty 
is not to mock them, but to lead them. Consider how 
God has stood by man's history and labored with him 
in his crudest follies, and even by means of them con- 
trived to help him on. 



THE GROWTH OF LAW. 123 

We have a country where the legislation of right is 
free as it never was before in any other. Everything 
true, just, pure, good, great, can here unfold itself with- 
out obstruction. To say that we are called to be a 
nation of lawgivers, in the public constitution, is not 
all ; we are called to be lawgivers in a higher and more 
sacred capacity. Political law, as supported by force, 
is here weak, that it may be strong as supported by 
reason. Our institutions postulate, in everything, a 
a condition of love to the right, and their destiny is to 
be magnificent, as it is a destiny of principle and truth. 

Be it then our part, as scholars, to be lawgivers, 
bringing forth to men the determinations of reason, and 
assistino; them to construct the science of a'oodness. 
And consider that it is sound opinion, not multitudi- 
nous opinion, that takes the force of law. Have faith 
in truth, never in numbers. The great surge of num- 
bers rolls up noisily and imposingly, but flats out on 
the shore, and slides back into the mud of oblivion. 
But a true opinion is the ocean itself, calm in its rest, 
eternal in its power. The storms and tumultuous 
thunders of popular rage and bigoted wrong will some- 
time pause, in their travel round the sphere, and listen 
to its powerful voice. And if the night comes down to 
veil it for a time, it is still there, beating on with the same 
victorious pulse and waiting for the day. A right opin- 
ion can not die, for its life is in moral ideas, which is the 
life of God. Have patience, and it shall come to pass, in 
due time, that what you rested in the tranquillity of rea- 
son, has been crowned with the majesty of law. 



IV. 

THE FOUNDERS GREAT IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS.^ 



Gentlemen of the New England SocifexY: 

It is a filial sentiment, most honorably signified by 
yoUj in the organization of your Society, and the regu- 
lar observance of this anniversary, that the founders 
and first fathers of states are entitled to the highest 
honors. You agree, in this, with the fine philosophic 
scale of awards offered by Lord Bacon, when he says, 
^' The true marshaling of the degrees of sovereign hon- 
ors are these : In the first place, are Conditores ; found- 
ers of states. In the second place, are Legislaiores ; law- 
givers, which are sometimes called second-founders, or 
Perpetui Principes^ because they govern by their ordi- 
nances after they are gone. In the third place, are Lih- 
eratores ; such as compound the long miseries of civil 
wars, or deliver their countries from the servitude of 
strangers or tyrants. In the fourth place, are Propaga- 
toreSj or Propugnatores imperii; such as in honorable 
wars enlarge their territories, or make noble defense 
against invaders. And in the last place, Patres patrice^ 

* Delivered as an Oration before the New England Society of New 
York, Dec. 21, A. D. 1849. 



THE FOUNDEKS GREAT, ETC. 125 

which reign justly, and make the times good wherein 
they live." 

Holding this true scale of honor, which you may the 
more heartily do, because you have fathers who are en- 
titled to reverence for their worth as well as their his- 
toric position, you have undertaken to remember, and 
with due observances to celebrate, each year, this 
twenty-second day of December, as the day Conditorum 
Eeipuhlicoe. Be it evermore a day, such as may fitly 
head the calendar of our historic honors; a day that 
remembers with thoughtful respect and reverence the 
patience of oppressed virtue, the sacrifices of duty, and 
the solemn fatherhood of religion ; — a register also of 
progress, showing every year by what new triumphs 
and results of good, spreading in wider circles round 
the globe, that Being whose appropriate work it is to 
crown the fidelity of faithful men, is Himself justifying 
your homage, and challenging the homage of mankind. 

Meantime, be this one caution faithfully observed, 
that all prescriptive and stipulated honors have it as 
their natural infirmity to issue in extravagant and 
forced commendations, and so to mar not seldom the 
reverence they would fortify. "We pay the truest hon- 
ors to men that are worthy, not by saying all imagina- 
ble good concerning them : least of all can we do fit 
honor, in this manner, to the fathers of New England. 
It as little suits the dignity of truth, as the iron rigor of 
the men. If it be true, as we often hear, that one may 
be most effectually "damned by faint praise;" it may 

11^ 



126 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

also be done as fatally, by what is even more unjust 
and, to genuine merit, more insupportable, by over- 
vehement and undistinguishing eulog}^ We make al- 
lowance for the subtractions of envy ; but when love 
invents fictitious grounds of applause, we imagine some 
fatal defect of those which are real and true. There is 
no genuine praise but the praise of justice: 

" For fame impatient of extremes, decays 
Xot less bv envT, than excess of praise." 

In this view, it will not be an offense to you, I trust, 
or be deemed adverse to the real spirit of the occasion, 
if I suggest the conviction that our New England fa- 
thers have sometimes suffered in this manner — not by 
any conscious design to over-magnify their merit, but 
by the amiable zeal of inconsiderate and partially quali- 
fied eulogy. In particular, it has seemed to be a fre- 
quent detraction from their merit, that results are as- 
cribed to their wisdom, or sagacious forethought as pro- 
jectors, which never even came into their thoughts at 
all ; and which, taken only as proofs of a Providential 
purpose working in them, and of God's faithful adher- 
ence to their history, would have yielded a more rever- 
ent tribute to Him, and raised them also to a far higher 
pitch of sublimity in excellence. The very greatness 
of these men, as it seems to me, is their unconsciousness. 
It is that so little conceiving the future they had in 
them, they had a future so magnificent — that God was 
in them in a latent power of divinity and world- 
disposing counsel which they did not suspect, in a wis- 
dom wiser than they knew, in principles more quicken- 



IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 127 

ing and transforming than they could even imagine 
themselves, and was thus preparing in them, to lift the 
whole race into a higher plane of existence, and one as 
much closer to Himself. 

And just here is the difficulty that most consciously 
oppresses me in the engagement of the present occasion. 
It is to praise these great men justl}^ — to say what is fit 
to them and not unfit to God. It is to make uncon- 
sciousness in good the crown of sublimity in good ; to 
set it forth as their special glory, in this view, that they 
executed by duty and the stern fidelity of their lives, 
what they never propounded in theory, or set up as a 
mark of attainment — so to meet the spirit of the occa- 
sion, and to raise in you the fit measure of enthusiasm, 
by the sober wine alone of justice and truth. 

Do I then deny what has been so often observed in 
the great characters of history, that they commonly act 
their part under a visible sense or presentiment of the 
greatness of their mission ? Is it a fiction that they are 
thus exalted in it, made impassible, borne along as by 
some fate or destiny, or, to give it a more Christian 
name, some inspiration or call of God? Nothing is 
more true; it is in fact the standing distinction the 
sublimity itself of greatness. 

** Souls destined to o'erleap the vulgar lot, 
And mould tlie world unto the scheme of God, 
Have a fore-consciousness of their high doom." 

Ignorant of this, we can not understand what great- 
ness is. To us it no longer exists. ' But we need, in 



128 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

the acceptance of, a truth so ennobhiig to human his- 
tory, to affix those terms and restrictions under which 
it is practically manifested, else we make even history 
itself fantastic or incredible. 

Whoever appears to assert any great truth of science 
or religion, wanted by his age, ought to feel an immov 
able conviction that the truth asserted will prevail, else 
he is no fit champion. But as regards the particular 
effects it will produce in human society ; these he can 
not definitely trace. He can only know that, falling 
into the great currents of causes, complex and multi- 
tudinous as they are, some good and beneficent results 
will follow, that are worthy of its divine scope and or- 
der. In like manner, the hero of an occasion, exalted 
by the occasion to be God's instrument, we may believe 
is sometimes gifted with a confidence that is nearly pro- 
phetic, and by force of which he is able to inspire 
others with a courage equal to the greatness of the en- 
counter. Thus it was that Luther, in virtue of a confi- 
dence that other men had not, became the hero of the 
Eeformation, But when we speak of inventions, insti- 
tutions, policies, migrations, revolutions, which are not 
single truths or occasions, but inaugurations of causes 
that can reveal their issues only in the lapse of centu- 
ries, the projectors and leaders in these can be sure, at 
most, only of the grand ideal that inspires them ; but 
by what medial changes and turns of history God will 
bring it to pass, or in what definite forms of social good 
it will finally clothe itself, they can but dimly conceive. 

And this is what I mean, when I speak of the uncon- 



IN THEIR UNCOXSCIOUSXESS. 129 

scions, or iindesigning agency of the fathers of New 
England, considered as the authors of those great polit- 
ical and social issues which we now look upon as the 
highest and crowning distinctions of our history. Their 
ideal was not in these, but in issues still farther on and 
more magnificent, to which these are only Providential 
media or means. Occupied by the splendor of these 
medial stages of advancement, and unable to imagine 
anything yet more glorious to be revealed hereafter, we 
conclude that we have reached the final result and his- 
toric completion of our destiny ; and then we cast about 
us to ask what our sublime fathers attempted, and settle 
a final judgment of their merits. Sometimes we smile 
at their simplicity, finding that the highest hope they 
conceived in their migration, was nothing but the hope 
of some good issue for religion ! We secretly wonder, 
or, it may be, openly express our regret, that they could 
not have had some conception of the magnificent results 
of hberty and social order that were here to be revealed. 
And in this view, we often set ourselves to it, as a kind 
of filial duty, to make out for them what we so much 
desire. 

Who of us, meantime, is able, for once, to imagine 
that the shortness may be ours, the prophecy and the 
greatness theirs ? We want them to be heroes, but we 
can not allow them to be heroes of faith. This indeed" 
is a great day for heroes, and our literature is at work, 
as in a trade, upon the manufacture. But it will some- 
time be discovered that, in actual life, there are two 
kinds of heroes — heroes for the visible, and heroes for 



130 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

the invisible ; they that see their mark hung out as a 
flag to be taken on some turret or battlement, and they 
that see it nowhere, save in the grand ideal of the in- 
ward life ; extempore heroes fighting out a victory defi- 
nitely seen in something near at hand, and the life-long, 
century -long, heroes that are instigated by no ephemeral 
crown or more ephemeral passion, but have sounded the 
deep base-work of God's principle, and have dared 
calmly to rest their all upon it, come the issue where it 
may, or when it may, or in what form God will give it. 
The former class are only symbols, I conceive, in the 
visible life of that more heroic and truly divine great- 
ness in the other, which is never offered to the eyes in 
forms of palpable achievement. These latter are God's 
heroes — heroes all of faith; the other belong to us; 
flaming as dilettanti figures of art in romances, figuring 
as gods in the apotheosis of pantheistic literature, or it 
may be striding in real life and action over fields of 
battle and pages of bloody renown. If our New Eng- 
land fathers do not figure as conspicuously in this latter 
class of heroes as some might desire, may they not 
sometime be seen, when the main ideal of religion is 
fulfilled, to have been the more truly great because of 
the remoteness and the sacred grandeur of their aims ? 
And if the political successes in which, as Americans, 
we so properly indulge our pride, are but scintillations 
thrown off in the onward career of their historic aims 
and purposes, little honor can it do them to discover 
that these scintillations are the primal orbs and central 
fires of their expectation. 



IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 131 

Let us offer them no such injustice. They are not to 
be praised as a band of successful visionaries, coming 
over to this new world, in prophetic lunacy, to get up a 
great republic and renovate human society the world 
over. They propound no theories of social order. 
They undertake not, in their human will or wisdom, to 
be a better Providence to the nations ; make no prom- 
ise of the end they will put to all the human ills, or of 
melting off the ice of the poles to cap them with a ^^ bo- 
real crown " of felicity. 

Had they come to build a new future, in this manner, 
by their will, according to some preconceived theory of 
their head, the first awful year of their settlement would 
have broken their confidence, and left them crying, as 
home-sick children, . for some way of return to their 
country. The 

" craven scruple 

Of thinking too precisely of tlie event, — 

A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom, 

And ever three parts coward — " 

would have shaken their fortitude with an ague as fatal 
as that which, in the first dreadful winter, assailed the 
life of their bodies — giving us, in their history, one 
other and quite unnecessary proof, that man is the 
weakest and most irresolute of beings when he hangs 
his purpose on his expectations. But coming in simple 
duty, duty was their power — a divine fate in them, 
whose thrusting on to greatness and triumphant good, 
took away all questions from the feeble arbitrament of 
their will, and made them even impassible to their bur- 



THE FOUNDERS 6BSAT 

dens. And they went on building their unknown fa- 
ture, the more resolutely because it was unknown. 
For, though unknown^ it was present in its power — 
present, not as in their projects and wise theories, but 
as a latent heat, concealed in their principles, and 
works, and prayers, and secret love, to be given out 
and become palpable in the world's cooling, ages after. 

Xor is this susrcrestion of a latent wisdom or law 
present in their migration, any conceit of the £ancy ; for 
as in the growth of a man or a tree, so also in the pri- 
mal germ of nations and social bodies, there is a secret 
Form or Law present in them, of which their after- 
growth is scarcely more than a fit actualization or de- 
velopment. This secret germ, or presiding form of the 
nascent order, has the force also of a creative, constitu- 
tive instinct in the body, building up that form by a 
wisdom hid in itself; though conceived, in thought, by 
no one member. By this instinctive action languages 
are struck out as permanent forms of thought, in the 
obscurest and most savage tribes, squared by the nicest 
principles of symmetry and grammatic order, having 
hid in their single words whole chapters of wisdom 
that, some thousands of years after, wiU be opened by 
a right explication, to the astonished gaze of the philo- 
sophic student By the same instinctive germinal 
force, unconsciously present in a people, the future in- 
stitutions and forms of liberty will be constructed ; just 
as the comb of the hive is built by the instinctive ge- 
ometry of the hive, though not by the geometric sci- 



IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 133 

ence of any one or more single bees in it. And some- 
what in this manner it was that our institutions were 
present in the fathers and founders of our history. 
They had in their religious faith a high constructive 
instinct, raising them above their age and above them- 
selves; creating in them fountains of wisdom deeper 
than they consciously knew, and preparing in them 
powers of benefaction that were to be discovered only 
by degrees and slowlj^-, to the coming ages. If you 
will show them forth as social projectors or architects 
of a new democracy, they stubbornly refuse to say or 
do anything in that fashion. They are found protesting 
rather against your panegyric itself Or if they have 
come to your acquaintance overlarded in this manner, 
so that you really regard them as the successful and de- 
liberate revolutionizers of the modern age, you will 
need to wash off these coarse pigments and daubs of 
eulogy, as with nitre and much soap, and set them be- 
fore you shining in the consecrating oil of faith, before 
you can truly conceive them as the fathers of American 
history. Their greatness is the unconscious greatness 
of their simple fidelity to God — the divine instinct of 
good and of wisdom by which God, as a reward upon 
duty, made them authors and founders of a social state 
under forms appointed by Himself. 

It has been already assumed in this general outline 
of my subject, that the practical aim or ideal of our fa- 
thers, in their migration to the new world, was religion. 
This was the star of the East that guided them hither. 

12 



VSi THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

They came as to the second cradle-place of a renovated 
Messiahship. They declare it formally themselves, 
when they give, as the principal reason of their under- 
taking, ^'the great hope and inward zeal they had of 
laying some good foundation for the propagating and 
advancing the kingdom of Christ, in these remote parts 
of the world.""^ 

It appears, however, that they had a retrospective ref- 
erence, in their thoughts, as well as the prospective ex- 
pectation here stated. Thus, it is affirmed by Mr. Hil- 
dersham, who had full opportunity to know their pre- 
cise designs, that the colonists, as a body, before com- 
ing over, ^^ agreed in nothing further, than in this gen- 
eral principle — that the reformation of the Church was 
to be endeavored according to the word of God.^'f 
But precisely what, or how much they intended by 
this, will be seen nowhere else, with so great clearness, 
as in the ever memorable parting address which Eobin- 
son made to the Pilgrims, at their embarkation. Here 
we behold the real flame of their great idea. He said : 

^*I charge you before God and his blessed angels, 
that you follow me no further than I have followed 
Christ. And if God shall reveal anything to you, by 
any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it 
as you ever were to receive anything by my ministry ; 
for I am confident that God hath more truth yet to 
break forth out of His holy word. I can not suffi- 
ciently bewail the condition of the Eeformed churches, 
who have come to a period in religion, and will go no 

* Young's nironiclets, p. 47. f Cotton Mather, p. 18. 



IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 135 

further than the instruments of their reformation. The 
Lutherans can not be driven to go beyond Luther ; for 
whatever part of God's will he hath further imparted 
by Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. And 
so also the Oalvinists stick where Calvin left them — a 
misery much to be lamented. For though they both 
were shining lights in their times, yet God hath not re- 
vealed his whole will to them. Eemember now you.r 
church covenant, whereby you engage with God and 
one another, to receive whatever light shall be made 
known to you from His written word. For it is not 
possible that the Christian world is so lately come out 
of such thick anti-Christian darkness, and that full per- 
fection of knowlege should break forth at once."^ 

A most remarkable passage of history, in which this 
truly great man is seen asserting a position, at least two 
whole centuries in advance of his age. His residence 
abroad, among so many forms of opinion and of order, 
has quickened in his mind the germ of a true compre- 
hensive movement. . He also perceives the impossibil- 
ity that the full maturity of truth and order should 
have burst forth in a day, as distinctly as a philosophic 
historian of the nineteenth century. The Eeformation, 
he is sure, is no complete thing — probably it is more 
incomplete than any one has yet been able to imagine. 
And then he has the faith to accept his own conclusion. 
Sending out the little half-flock of his church, across 
the wide ocean, he bids them go to watch for light ; and 
there, in the free wilderness of nature, unrestrained by 

* Young's Chronicles, p. 396-7. 



136 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

his own teachings, to complete, if possible, the un- 
known measure of Holy Eeformation. 

This was the errand he gave them, and in this we 
have the fixed ideal of their undertaking. And they 
meant by ^' reformation," all that God should teach them 
and their children of the coming ages, by the light that 
should break forth from His holy word — all that was 
needed to ^^^'epare the purity and universal spread of 
Christian truth, and open to mankind the reign of 
Christ in its full felicity and glory. They fixed no 
limits. It might include more than they at present 
thought, or could even dare to think. Still they had 
courage to say — "Let the reformation come in God's 
measures, and as He himself wdll shape it." And for 
this, they entered, with a stout heart, upon the perils 
and privations of their most perilous undertaking. 
Doubtless they had the natural feelings of men, but 
they were going to bear the ark of the Almighty, and 
could not painfully fear. Eobinson had said — and he 
knew what was in them — "It is not with us as with 
other men, whom small things discourage, and small 
discontents cause to wish themselves home again. ""^ 
Confidence most sublime! justified by a history of pa- 
tience equally sublime. AVe shall see, before I close, 
whether the errand of reliofious reformation, thus ac- 
cepted, was an illusion, or whether it contained, in fact, 
the spring of all our political successes, and of other 
and still greater that are yet to come. 

* Young's Chronicles, p. 61. 



IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 137 

Let us pause a moment tere and change the scene. 
We will leave the ^'pinched fanatics" of Leyden, as 
they are sometimes called, weeping their farewell on 
Eobinson's neck, and turn ourselves to England. As- 
cending out of the dull and common-place level of re- 
ligion, we will breathe, a moment, in the higher plane 
of wisdom and renowned statesmanship. The philoso- 
pher and sage of St. Albans, hereafter to be celebrated 
as the father of modern science, sits at his table, in the 
deep silence of study, preparing a solemn gift of wis- 
dom for his countrymen. His brow hangs heavy over 
his desk, and the glow of his majestic face, and the 
clear lustre of his meditative eye, reveal the mighty 
soul discoursing with the inward oracle. The noble 
property-holders and chartered land-companies of the 
realm are discoursing, everywhere, of the settlement of 
colonies in the new world, and discussing the causes of 
failure in the settlements heretofore attempted — he has 
taken up the theme, and is writing his essay '' Of Plan- 
tations." And the advice he offers to their guidance is 
summarily this— Make a beginning, not with "the 
scum of the people," but with a fair collection of single 
men, who are good in all the several trades of industry. 
Make as much as possible of the spontaneous products 
of the country, such as nuts and esculent roots; but 
expect to support the plantation, in great part, by sup- 
plies from the mother country, for the first twenty 
years, and let the supplies be dealt out carefully, "as 
in a besieged town." "As to government, let it be in 
the hands of one, assisted with some counsel, and let 

12- 



138 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

them have commission to exercise martial laws with 
some limitations.'' ^^When the plantation grows to 
strength, then it is time to plant with women as with 
men." 

Need I stay to imagine, before an American audi- 
ence, what kind of history must follow a plantation or- 
dered in this manner — a plantation without the family 
state, without the gentle strengthening influence of wo- 
man, governed by a single head, under martial law ! 

Behold the little May Flower rounding, now, the 
southern cape of England — filled with husbands and 
wives and children, families of righteous men, under 
"covenant with God and each other," "to lay some 
good foundation for religion :" — engaged both to make 
and to keep their own laws, expecting to supply their 
own wants and bear their own burdens, assisted by 
none but the Grod in whom they trust. Here are the 
hands of industry! the germs of liberty! the dear 
pledges of order ! and the sacred beginnings of a home ! 

That was the wisdom of St. Albans — this of Leyden. 
Bacon is there — Eobinson is here. There was the deep 
sagacity of human statesmanship — here is the divine 
oracle of duty and religion. religion ! religion ! true 
daughter of God ! wiser in action than genius itself in 
theory ! How visible, in such a contrast, is the truth, 
that whatever is wisest in thought and most heroic in 
impulse, flows down upon men from the summits of re- 
ligion — and is, in fact, a divine'birth in souls ! 

We are not, then, to conceive, and must not attempt 



IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 139 

to show, that our fathers undertook the migration with 
any political objects in view ; least of all as distinctly 
proposing to lay the foundations of a great republic. 
Their end was religion, simply and only religion. Out 
upon the lone ocean, feeling their way cautiously, as it 
were, through the unknown waves, exploring, in their 
busy fancies and their prayers, the equally unknown 
future before them, they as little conceived that they 
had in their ship the germ of a vast repubhc that, in 
two centuries, would command the respect and attract 
the longing desires of the nations, as they saw with 
their eyes the lonely wastes about them whitening with 
the sails and foaming under the swift ships of that re- 
public, already become the first commercial power of 
the world. The most sanguine expectation of theirs I 
have anywhere discovered, which, however, was not 
political, but religious, was ventured by Gov. Bradford, 
viz. : — '^ That as one small candle may light a thousand, 
so the light kindled here may, in some sort, shine even 
to the whole nation!" This one small candle lighting 
the thousands of all England, is not quite as bold a 
figure of enthusiasm now as it was when it was uttered, 
and will probably be somewhat less extravagant, a 
hundred years hence, than now. No ! they cross the 
sea in God's name only, sent by Him, as they believed, 
to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness — Pre- 
pare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 
But whither those straightened paths will lead, and in 
what shape the new kingdom of the Lord will come, 
they as little conceive as John the Baptist himself. 



140 THE FOU^^DERS GREAT 

Let us not be surprised, then, neither let it be any 
derogation from their merit, if we find them actually 
opposed, not seldom, in thought or speculative view, to 
opinions and institutions, now regarded as being most 
distinctively American. In this I partly rejoice; for 
some of the distinctions we boast, it is their most real 
praise, not to have sought or accepted. Thus we boast 
that we have made solemn proof to the world of the 
great principle, that civil government has its founda- 
tion in a social compact- — that it originates only in the 
consent of the governed — that self-government is the 
inalienable right of every people — that true liberty is 
the exercise and secure possession of this prerogative — 
that majorities of wills have an inherent right to deter- 
mine the laws — and that government by divine right is 
only a solemn imposture. I will not deny that, in 
some very partial and qualified sense, these supposed 
doctrines of ours may be true. But taken in the more 
absolute sense, in which they are boasted by many, 
they compose a heap of as empty and worthless chaff as 
ever fed the conceit of any people in the world. 

What are formal compacts, what is self-government, 
what are majorities of wills, taken as foundations of 
civil order? Or, if we speak of right, what right is 
there of any kind, which is not divine right? Or, 
dropping all such refinements, what truth can there be 
in abstract principles of order, discovered by us, which 
make every other government that has existed in the 
world, for six thousand years, an imposture, or a base- 
less usurpation ? 



IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 141 

But if it be conceived that there are three distinct or- 
ders of government, adapted to three distinct stages of 
social advancement — the government of force, the gov- 
ernment of prescription, and the government of choice 
— and then that the particular terms of order just 
named are most appropriate and happiest for us, taken 
as modes or machinery of government, and not as theo- 
retic and moral foundations ; if we say these will best 
accommodate our liberties, and secure its in the high 
position to which God has raised us, it is well. But 
then we need to add that law is law, binding upon 
souls, not as human will, or the will of just one more 
than half the full grown men over a certain age, but a 
power of God entering into souls and reigning in them 
as a divine instinct of civil order, creating thus a state — 
perpetual, beneficent, the safeguard of the homes and 
of industry, the condition of a public feeling and a con- 
sciously organic life. This it is that makes all govern- 
ment sacred and powerftil, that it somehow stands in 
the will of God ; nay, it is the special dignity and glorj^- 
and freedom of our government, that it rests, so little, 
on the mere will or force of man, so entirely on those 
principles of justice and common beneficence which we 
know are sacred to God. And it is the glory also of 
our founders and first fethers that they prepared us to 
such a state. Had they managed to weave nothing 
into our character more adequate than we sometimes 
discover in our political dogmas, we should even have 
wanted the institutions about which we speculate so 
feebly, and should have been as hopeless of an}^ settled 



142 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

terms of order, as we now are confident of our baseless 
and undigested principles. 

I can not withstand the temptation to recite, just 
here, another passage from Eobinson. I do it, partly 
because it so exactly meets the genius of our institu- 
tions, and reveals so beautifully the moral springs of 
our history, and partly because it prepares a way so 
aptly for other suggestions jet to be offered. He gives 
the Pilgrims, on their departure, a written letter of ad- 
vice to be carried with them, in which are contained 
the following remarkable words — words which I could 
even wish were graven in tablets of stone, as the words 
of a father before Washington, and set up over the 
doors of our Congress, our State Legislatures, our town 
halls and political assembly rooms, there to stand, 
meeting the eyes of our people as long as the nation 
exists — certain always of this, that when the spirit of 
the words is wholly gone, the nation will exist no- 
longer : 

^^ Lastly, whereas you are to become a body politic, 
using civil government amongst yourselves, and are not 
furnished with any persons of special eminency above 
the rest [no knights or noble orders] to be chosen into 
office of government, let your wisdom and godliness 
appear, not only by choosing such persons as do en- 
tirely love and will diligently promote the common 
good, but also in yielding unto them all due honor and 
obedience in their lawful administrations ; not behold- 
ing the ordinariness of their persons, but God's ordi- 
nance for your good ; nor being like the foolish multi- 



IN THEIK UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 143 

tude, wlio more honor the gay coat [understand the 
stars and ribbons of nobility] than either the virtuous 
mind of the man, or the glorious ordinance of the Lord. 
But you know better things, and that the image of the 
Lord's power and authority, which the magistrate bear- 
eth, is honorable in how mean persons soever. And 
this duty you may the more willingly and conscionably 
perform, because you are, at least for the present, to 
have only them for your ordinary governors, which 
yourselves shall make choice of for that work."^ 

But, while our founders stand right, when viewed in 
relation to what is most really fundamental in our insti- 
tutions, we must not expect them to concur in all that 
we now regard as most properly and distinctly Amer- 
ican. 

They had no schemes of democracy to execute. 
They were not, in fact, or in their own view, republi- 
cans in their ideas of government. When Eobinson's 
doctrine of church order was assailed as being a scheme 
of Christian democracy, he repelled the imputation as a 
slander, insisting, instead, that it was a plan of order 
'^plainly aristocratical."f They were all, to a man, 
royalists and true Englishmen — pleased with the hope 
of " endeavoring the advancement of his Majesty's do- 
minion.":]: Some of them delighted in being able to 
write "J/r." before their names, and the others would 
have cast out any man as a leveler and disorderly per- 
son, who dared to controvert the validity of that hio-h 

* Young's Chronicles, p. 95. f Punchard, p. 348. X Cotton Mather, p. 6. 



li-i THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

distinction. Does any one the less certainly know that 
their whole scheme of principle and order was virtually 
and essentially republican, even from the first? 

They as little thought of raising a separation of 
church and state as of planting a new democracy. 
They accepted in full and by formal reference, the En- 
glish doctrine on this subject, and Eobinson even pro- 
fessed his willingness to accept the ^'oath of suprem- 
acy," which acknowledges the king as the rightful head 
of the church. When a new settlement or town was 
planted, they said, not that the settlers were become a 
body politic, but that they were ^4nchurched." And 
when Davenport preached on the terms of suffrage, the 
problem stated was, ^'how to order a frame of civil 
government in a plantation whose design is relig- 
ion."^ 

And yet we can look back now and see as distinctly 
as possible, that their very doctrine of church-member- 
ship must necessitate a final separation of church and 
state. For, if none but the true members of Christ can 
be included in the church, and none but such as are in- 
cluded can have the right of suffrage, then it must 
shortly appear that many good neighbors and virtuous 
sons and brothers are reduced to the condition of aliens 
in the commonwealth. Accordingly, we find that the 
settlers of the Hartford Colony, who had begun to see 
the pernicious consequences of the restricted suffrage in 
Massachusetts, in the beautiful constitution they adopt- 
ed — the first written constitution of a purely represent- 

* Bacon, p. 280. 



IN THEIR UNCOXSCIOUSNESS. 145 

ative republican government known to human history — 
opened the right of suffrage to all whom the several 
towns might elect as freemen. And thus, in less than 
twenty years after the settlement of Plymouth, the sep- 
aration of church and state is visibly begun — a step is 
taken which can possibly issue in this alone, though the 
result is not completely and formally reached, till a 
hundred and fifty years have passed away. 

I wish it were possible to claim for our fathers the 
honor of a free toleration of religious opinions. This it 
would seem that they might have learned from their 
own wrongs and sufferings. But they were not the 
men to think of finding their doctrines in any woes of 
their flesh. They had, in fact, a conscience against tol- 
eration, lest the state, ''whose end is religion," should 
seem to connive at false doctrines and schismatic prac- 
tices. Therefore, when Cromwell was proposing toler- 
ation in England, the Synod of Massachusetts even pro- 
tested against the measure as licentious. And one of 
their ministers, the eccentric pastor of Ipswich, was 
stirred up to publish, in England, a most violent dia- 
tribe against it. He delighted in the old maxim that 
"true religion is ignis 'prohationis^^ — a test of fire. In- 
deed this narrow-spirited man had lived in the midSt of 
toleration, upon the continent, and had not discovered 
its Christian beauty. "I lived," he says, ''in a city 
where a Papist preached in one church, a Lutheran in 
another, a Calvinist in a third ; a Lutheran one part of 
the day, and a Calvinist the other, in the same pulpit. 
The religion of that place was but motley and meagre, 



146 THE FOUXDEKS GKEAT 

and tlieir aflfections leopard-like.''''^ Alas ! for the brave 
pastor of Ipswich, how clear is it now, that the tolera- 
tion he so much dreaded really belonged to all but the 
rather testy prejudices that he took for a part of his re- 
ligion. The old ignis lorobationis^ too, whose smoke 
had so lately been wafted over England from Smith- 
field and Tyburn — which, how^ever, he did not mean, I 
trust, to commend in its most literal and orthodox 
sense — is gone out forever the world over. And as to 
the "leopard-like" religion, just that w^hich compelled 
a separation of Church and State, has doubtless com- 
pelled a sufferance also of this, even in his own paro- 
chial Ipswich itself. Or if free opinion be a leopard, 
spotting over the Church, or dissolving it into so many 
motley groups of division, it will ere long be seen that 
this unruly leopard is fulfilling the prophecy, forgetting 
his instincts of prey and schism, and lying down wath 
the kids of love, in a catholic and perennial unity. 

It need scarcely be added, that our fathers had as 
little thought of a separation from the mother country 
and as little desire of founding an independent com- 
monwealth, as of the other distinctions just named. 
England w^as their home, they loved the monarchy. 
They would even have doubted their piety itself, had 
they found a single unloyal thought in their bosoms. 
And yet they were compelled to be jealous, even from 
the first, of any too close implication with the political 
affairs of the mother country, lest it should finally in- 
volve the security of their liberties. They formally 

* Cobbler of Agawam, p. ^. 



IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 147 

declined, in this view, to connect themselves with 
Cromwell's Parliament by any application to it, and 
also to appear by deputies in the Westminster Assem- 
bly of Divines."^ It may be taken also as a singular 
and most ominous fact, that the Hartford Colony in ar- 
ranging the new constitution just alluded to, made no 
mention either of king or parliament. This constitu- 
tion required an oath of allegiance directly to itself, and 
even asserted a supreme power — ''In which Greneral 
Court shall consist the supreme power of the Common- 
wealth."f And this supreme power they, in fact, ex- 
ercised forever after; subject to no negative, under 
governors of their own choice, creating their own tribu- 
nals and holding them without appeal, and even openly 
resisting the royal levies as an infringement of their 
rights. Here was, in fact, a little, independent, uncon- 
scious republic, unfolding itself by the banks of the 
Connecticut, on its own basis, under its own laws ; so 
that when the war of independence came, instead of 
being dissolved by the state of revolution and required 
to reorganize itself, it stood ready in full form for ac- 
tion, and was able, in the first twenty-four hours after 
the outbreak, to set twenl^ thousand men upon the 
march, fully appointed with ofi&cers and arms. The 
people had never set up for independence. They were 
loyal — in their way. But they had been sheltered un- 
der the very singular privileges of their charter, as well 
as by their more retired position ; and had actually 
grown apart, unconsciously and by force of their own 

■^- Bancroft, vol. i, pp, 450-L f Trnrabiill, i, p. 532. 



148 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

moral affinities, into a free republic. The condition of 
Ehode Island was similar ; and the same general pro- 
cess was going on also in the other colonies, only under 
many restraints from royal governors and the qualified 
privileges of their charters. 

Now there is a class of writers and critics in our 
country, who imagine it is quite clear that our fathers 
can not have been the proper founders of our American 
liberties, because it is in proof that they were so intol- 
erant and so clearly unrepublican often in their avowed 
sentiments. They suppose the world to be a kind of 
professor's chair, and expect events to transpire logi- 
cally in it. They see not that casual opinions, or con- 
ventional and traditional prejudices are one thing, and 
that principles and morally dynamic forces are often 
quite another ; that the former are the connectives only 
of history, the latter its springs of life ; and that if the 
former serve well enough, as providential guards and 
moderating weights, overlying the deep geologic fires 
and subterranean heavings of the new moral instincts 
below, these latter will assuredly burst up, at last, in 
strong mountains of rock, to crest the world. Unable 
to conceive such a truth, they cast about them, accord- 
ingly, to find the paternity of our American institutions 
in purely accidental causes. We are clear of aristo- 
cratic orders, they say, because there was no blood of 
which to make an aristocracy; independent of king 
and parliament, because we grew into independence 
under the natural effects of distance and the exercise of 



IX THEIR UXCONSCIOUSXESS. 149 

a legislative power; republican, because our constitu- 
tions were cast in the moulds of British law ; a wonder 
of growth in riches, enterprise, and population, because 
of the hard necessities laid upon us, and our simple 
modes of life. 

And the concurrent action of these causes must not 
be denied ; we only must not take them as the true ac- 
count of our successes. As good accidents were en- 
joyed elsewhere as here. There is the little decayed 
town of St. Augustine, settled by a Spanish colony 
even earlier, by some years, than Boston, which, never- 
theless, we were just now called to rescue, by a mili- 
tary force, from the incursions of the savages ! There 
are Mexico and the South American states, colonized 
by Spain, even a hundred years prior to the settlement 
of Plymouth, — when Spain, too, was at the height of her 
glory, and even far in advance of England, as regards 
the state of wealth and civil order, — fellow-republics 
indeed in name, but ignorant still of what liberty is, 
thirty years after they have gotten the right to it; 
poor, unprogressive, demoralized by superstition, and 
the oldest and strongest of them all actually contend- 
ing, at this moment, with the aborigines, to save large 
towns and old and populous settlements from exterm- 
ination ! A glance in this direction is enough to show 
how much must be referred to the personal qualities 
and principles of the founders of a nation, how little to 
the mere accidents of circumstance and condition. 

Besides, there is yet another view of this question, 

13- 



150 THE FOUNDERS GKEAT 

that has a far higher significance. We do not under- 
stand, as it seems to me, the real greatness of our insti- 
tutions, when we look simply at the forms under which 
we hold our liberties. It consists not in these, but in 
the magnificent Possibilities that underlie these forms, 
as their fundamental supports and conditions. In these 
we have the true paternity and spring of our institu- 
tions, and these, beyond a question, are the gift of our 
founders. 

We see this, first of all, in the fixed relation between 
freedom and intelligence, and the remarkable care they 
had of popular education. It was not their plan to 
raise up a body of republicans. But they believed in 
mind as in God. Their religion was the choice of 
mind. The gospel they preached must have minds to 
hear it; and hence the solemn care they had, even 
ftom the first day of their settlement, of the education 
of every child. And, as God would have it, the chil- 
dren whom they trained up for j^iUars in the church, 
turned out also to be more than tools of power. They 
grew up into magistrates, leaders of the people, debat- 
ers of right and of law, statesmen, generals, and signers 
of declarations for liberty. Such a mass of capacity 
had never been seen before, in so small a body of men. 
And this is the first condition of liberty — the Condens- 
ation of Power. For liberty is not the license of an 
hour; it is not the butchery of a royal house, or the 
passion that rages behind a barricade, or the caps that 
are swung or the vivas shouted at the installing of a 
liberator. But it is the compact, impenetrable matter 



IK THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 151 

of mucli manliood, the compressed energy of good 
sense and public reason, having power to see before 
and after, and measure action by counsel — this it is 
that walls about the strength and liberty of a people. 
To be free is not to fly abroad, as the owls of the night, 
when they take the freedom of the air, but it is to set- 
tle and build and be strong — a commonwealth as much 
better compacted in the terms of reason, as it casts off 
more of the restraints of force. 

Mutual confidence also is another and fundamental 
condition of free institutions. When a revolution 
breaks out in Mexico or in Paris, and the old magis- 
tracies are swept away, then immediately you shall see 
that a most painful question arises. Power must be 
deposited somewhere ; with whom can it safely be trust- 
ed ? Is it already in the hands of a committee ? then 
can this committee be trusted? Is a military com- 
mander set up to maintain order for a time with greater 
efficiency ? what shall restrain the commander ? Who- 
ever is in power, the signs are jealously watched and 
morbidly construed. Well is it if some faction does 
not spring up to usurp the sovereign power, by a new 
act of revolution, justified by the pretext of saving the 
public liberties. Here you have the whole history of 
Mexico for the last thirty years, and, with fewer and 
less frequent alternations, the history of France, for a 
longer period. There is a fatal want of mutual confi- 
dence which nothing can supply, for the simple reason 
that there is nothing in which to confide. Power is 



152 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

known only as power, not as the endowment of obliga- 
tion. 

We are distracted by no sucIl infirmity. We have 
never a tliougbt of danger in the immense powers we 
confide to our rulers, simply because we can trust one 
another. We know so well the good sense and the 
firm conscience of our people as to be sure that, if any 
magistrate lifts the flag of an usurper and throws off 
the terms of his trust, all power will instantly drop out 
of his hands, and nothing will be necessary but to send 
a constable after him, even though he be the head of 
the army itself! 

Now this matter of mutual confidence, fundamental 
as you see it to be to all strength in our institutions, or 
peace under them, has a very humble, unpretending 
look. Scarcely ever has it crept into the notice of his- 
tory. It has never been celebrated, I am sure, in any 
epic poem. No ! but it is the silent exploit of a great 
history. Let Mexico ask for it, and offer the mortgage 
of her mines to buy it ; let France question her savans, 
or lay it on the mitred priesthood at her altars to pro- 
vide the new republic with this most indispensable gift, 
and alas ! they can not all together guess where it is, or 
whence it shall come. It is the silent growth of centu- 
turies, and there is no seed but the seed of Puritan dis- 
cipline, out of which it was ever known to grow. 

It is another and most necessary condition of free in- 
stitutions, that the people should be trained to a special 
exercise of personal self-government. For it is the dis- 



IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 153 

tinction of a republic that it governs less, and less vio- 
lently, substituting a moral in place of a public con- 
trol. It is an approach, towards no government, 
grounded, as a possibility, in the fact of a more com- 
plete government established in the personal habits of 
the subjects themselves. No republic could stand for a 
year, if it were compelled to govern as much, and with 
as much force as the English people are governed. 
Force must be nearly dispensed with. For, 

'' What are numbers knit 



By force or custom? Man who man would be, 
Must rule the emph'e of himself ; in it 
Must be supreme, establishing his throne 
Of vanquished will, quelling the anarchy 
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone." 

Under this high possibility or condition, punish- 
ments are mitigated, the laws are fewer and more sim- 
ple, the police are at their own private employments 
and com'e only when they are sent for, domestic fortres- 
ses and standing armies nowhere appear to annoy the 
sense of liberty. A foreigner passing through the re- 
public and hearing the sound of government in no beat 
of the drum, seeing the government in no parade of 
horse or foot, or badges of police, concludes that the 
people are put upon their good behavior to-day; but 
when he is told that they were so yesterday, and will 
be to-morrow, he imagines that a doom of anarchy is 
certainly close at hand. The fears of Washington and 
the most sober patriots of his time, that our govern- 
ment had not strength enough to stand, were justified 
by all human example, and were not to be blamed. 



15-i THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

And yet the course of our legislation has, to this hour, 
been a course of discontinuance. We seem to be mak- 
ing an experiment, with how many laws it is possible 
to disj)ense. We are anxious many times for the re- 
sult, and yet we do not suffer. We have gone a length 
in this direction which to any European will appear in- 
credible. When I ponder, not without fears I confess, 
this sublime distinction of our country, holding in con- 
trast what has been heretofore, and forecasting what 
God may be intending to bring forth here in the future 
ages, I am swallowed up in admiration of that power 
by which our faithful fathers were able to set our his- 
tory on a footing so peculiar. They gave up their all 
to religion, knew no wisdom but simply to live for re- 
ligion, and were it not for the intermixture of so many 
foreign elements which at present disturb our condition, 
we might almost imagine that in some good future, 
when the moral regimen of self-government is complete 
in our people, the external government of force and 
constraint may be safely dis2Densed with, the civil state 
subside in the fullness of the spiritual, and God alone 
be left presiding over the grand republic of wills by the 
suf&cienc}^ of his own divine Spirit and principles. 

Closely allied with this great possibility of self-gov- 
ernment, as a ground of republican order, is another, if 
indeed it be another, which must needs be prepared 
also. I speak of the displacement of lo3^alty, and the 
substitution of law. Loyalty is a sentiment, law a con- 
viction or principle. One is the tribute yielded to a 



IX THEIR UXCOXSCIOUSXESS. 155 

person, tlie other is the enthronement of an abstraction 
simply, or a formal statute. In the sentiment of loy- 
alty, taken as a tribute of homage to high-born persons, 
to the starred noble, or the reigning prince of a royal 
house, there is a certain beauty which naturally fasci- 
nates the mind. The sentiment partakes of chivalry. 
In such a distribution of the social state, there is a fine 
show of distinctions that sets off a romance, or a play, 
and even gives to society itself the courtly air of a 
drama. Government is here seen in the concrete, set 
off by dress and title and scales of precedence, and the 
loyal heart rejoices in the homage it yields to the gods 
of the eye. Such a government is better adapted to a 
people generally rude and uneducated, or low in moral 
culture, because it is a government of show and senti- 
ment, and not of reason. But, with all the captivating 
airs it has to the mere looker-on, it is, in fact, a govern- 
ment of authorized caprice, and obedience a state, too 
often, of disappointed fealty. If it is pleasant to look 
upon the fine livery of a noble, it is far less so to be 
imprisoned as a public malefactor for a slight breach of 
the game law. The splendor of nobility is too often 
corruption ; the protection, contempt and insult. More- 
over, it will be found that a merely personal and senti- 
mental homage is of a nature too inconstant or ca- 
pricious ever to be confidently trusted. It may pos- 
sibly hold a dog to his fidelity, but it never held a race 
of men. There, accordingly, has never been a govern- 
ment, standing on the basis of loyalty, that was not 
obliged to fortify loyalty by a display of steel and 



156 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

of military squadrons, more conspicuous than its noble 
orders. 

Now the problem is, in founding a republic, to pre- 
pare a social state without artificial distinctions, and 
govern it by abstractions and formal constitutions in 
place of persons. The ^'gay coat" of Eobinson, the 
royal pageants and the starred nobility are withdrawn 
from the eye, and the laws and constitutions — in one 
view nothing but invisible abstractions or terms of pub- 
lic reason — must be set in that inward homage which 
can never be shaken. The problem, though it be the 
most difficult ever attempted in the history of mankind, 
is yet, for once, accomplished. Consider the terrible 
surging of j^arty and passion, displayed in one of our 
Presidential elections. See a whole nation, vast enough 
for an empire, roused to the intensest pitch of strife and 
tearing, as it were in the coming out of a demon. The 
old Guelph and Grhibelline factions were scarcely more 
violent or implacable. But the day of election passes 
without so much as the report of an outbreak, and the 
day after the whole nation is as quiet as if there were 
but one mind in it — all by the power of Invisible Law ! 
Nay, we had a President at the head of our great repub- 
lic who had no party in the Congress, and few friends 
among the people. During four whole years he occu- 
pied the seat of power, dispensing a patronage greater 
than that of the Queen of England, with not a soldier 
visible to assert the majesty of order, and yet without 
even the symptom of a disturbance. Xever, in all the 
history of mankind, was displayed a spectacle of moral 



IN" THEIR UNCOXSGIOUSXESS. 157 

sublimity comparable to these four years of American 
history — sublimity the more sublime, because we were 
wholly unconscious of it ourselves, and had not even a 
thought that it could be otherwise ! 

And the fundamental cause, if you seek it, is that 
law with us is the public right and reason. It is mine, 
it is yours, and being for all as public reason, it is 
God's. To rebel against it, therefore, is to rebel both 
against ourselves and God. And if you ask whence 
came this conviction, how was it so firmly established ? 
By the spirit, I answer, and the religion of our fathers. 
Whether true or false is not now the question — it had, 
at least, that kind of merit that belongs to a religion 
made up mostly of judgments and abstractions. For 
these hard, heavy ingots of truth they renounced com- 
fort, country, property, and home. These they preach- 
ed. On these they even fed their children. Honors 
and pageants of distinction were out of sight. No man 
thouofht to be saved in the easv drill of forms. Xo mi- 
tred order, no priesthood, came between the worshiper 
and his God to act the patron for him, and be the con- 
duit of heaven's grace to his soul. He must enter with 
boldness into the holiest himself. There was besides in 
Calvinism, as a religion, just that which would give ab- 
stractions the intensest power and the most awful reality 
to the mind. It took its berinnino^ at the sovereimtv 
of God. It saw all men lying in a common plane of 
equality below. The only princes it knew were God's 
elect. And this kind of knio-hthood it was no easv 
formality to gain. It was to believe and accurately 

1-i 



158 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

hold and experimentally know the iron base-work of 
an abstractive theology. The mind was thrust into 
questions that compelled action — eternal decrees, abso- 
lute election, arbitrary grace, imputed sin, imputed 
righteousness. On these hard anvils of abstraction the 
blows of thought must needs be ever ringing, and when 
the points were said to be cordially received, it was 
meant also that they were dialectically bedded in the 
framework of the man. 

Hence the remarkable power of abstractions in the 
American mind. The Germans can live in them as 
their day-dreams, but we can live upon them and by 
them as our daily bread. Our enthusiasm is most en- 
thusiastic, our practical energy most energetic and 
practical just here — in what we do, or hope to do, un- 
der the application of great principles, whether of sci- 
ence, government, or religion. And thus it has come 
to pass that the gulf between loyalty and law is effectu- 
ally crossed over. The transition is made, and we are 
set by it on a new and, as time will show, a much high- 
er plane of history. In one view, there is something 
ungracious in our American spirit. We are nearly as 
ignorant of the loyal feeling as a tribe of wild animals 
— unrespectful often to worth and true precedence. 
And yet we have a feeling as truly national as any 
people in the world. If the traveler in England begins 
to count the pictured Oaks and Lions, the royal or 
princely names stuck upon all shows and shops of trade 
and chop-houses and even petty wares, down to soaps 
and razors — riding alwavs on "Royal" roads, sleeping at 



IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 159 

^'Eoyal" inns, and washing in the water of some 
''Eoyal" aqueduct — if he is nauseated, for the time, 
by what appears to be the inexhaustible servility of 
that great people, he is sure to smile at his own impa- 
tience when he returns, and recall the sentence he had 
passed. He takes up the newspapers at his hotel, and 
finds hoAY many headed by cognomens ingeniously 
compounded with "People," "Democracy," "Eepub- 
hc," "Constitution," "Independence," and "Nation." 
He runs his eye down the advertising columns and 
along the signboards of the street, and it falls on how 
many titles to patriotic favor, ranging in all grades, 
from the "People's Line" of steamboats and the ship 
"Constitution," down to the "Jefferson Lunch" and 
the "New Democratic. Liniment." Li one view, these 
demonstrations have a most ludicrous air ; in another, 
they are signs of the deepest significance — showing that 
we, as truly as the most loyal of nations, have our pub- 
lic feeling; a feeling not the less universal and decided, 
because its objects are .mostly impersonal. 

And, by force of this public feeling, it is just now be- 
ginning to appear that the government of this vast and, 
as most persons would say, loosely compacted republic, 
is really the strongest government in the world. What 
can be stronger than a government that has no enemies, 
and the subjects of which do not desire and would not 
suffer a change? They have looked out from their 
fastnesses and the loop-holes of fortified order in Eu- 
rope, prophesjang our speedy lapse into anarchy ; they 
have said, how can a people be governed without a 



160 ^ THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

personal embodiment of authority in princes and noble 
orders? but now, when their thrones are rocking on 
the underswell of popular movement, and their princes 
flying in fishermen's disguises from the splendid milli- 
nery that was to captivate the loyal eyes of their peo- 
ple, they begin to cast a look across the ocean, to the 
new republic, whose impalpable throne of law is every- 
where acknowledged by all as a friendly power — and is 
not this, they ask, the real strength and stability of or- 
der? 

Yes, and so I trust in God it shall prove itself to the 
coming ages. When twenty years hence, and twenty 
years after that, the successive waves of liberty roll 
high across the fields of EurojDC, and the old prescrip- 
tive orders and powers are drifted onward and away, 
till not even the wreck can be found, this better throne 
of law I trust shall stand, as the guardian to us and the 
promise to mankind of the freedom and the righteous 
peace they long for. 

Do I then afl&rm that our fathers foresaw these mag- 
nificent results, now revealed in our political history ? 
I have even made it a part of their greatness that they 
did not. They stood for God and religion alone. 
They asked for nothing, planned for nothing, hoped 
for nothing, save what should come of their religion. 
They believed in the Bible and in God's decrees, and 
they came over to profess the one and fulfill the other. 
They had not so much as thought of giving the uni- 
verse or the world a ^'Revised Constitution." They 



I^^ THEIR UNCONSCIOUSI^ESS. 161 

did not believe in predestination by man — therefore 
had nothing in common with our modern prophets of 
^^ science," who promise to reorganize society from a 
point without and by a scheme imposed, not by any 
remedial forces of faith and duty, acting from within 
and through its secret laws. They did not begin at the 
point zero in themselves, or in their own human wis- 
dom, but at duty; and they represent, at once, the 
infallible success and. the majestic firmness of duty. 
Compared with the class of ephemeral world-renovators 
just named, they stand as the firm, granitic, heaven- 
piercing Needles, by the mer de glace of human unbe- 
liefs and the unwisdoms of pretended science ; and while 
that is cracking below in the frosts by which it is crys- 
tallized, and grinding down its bed of destiny, to be 
melted in the heat of practical life and be seen no more, 
they rise serenely, as ever, lifting their heads above the 
storm-clouds of the world, and stand — still looking up! 
They will do below only what they seek above. They 
will give us only the reward of their lives, and what 
may be distilled from their prayers. And in these, 
they give us all. 

Ah ! the sour, impracticable race, who, by reason of 
their sinister conscience, could not kneel at the sacra- 
ments, and must needs stand up before God Himself, 
when kings and bishops kneeled ; barbarians of schism, 
who revolted to be rid of the Christian civility of priest- 
ly garments; who could not be in the spirit on the 
Lord's day under the excellent prayers of the Parlia- 
ment, and preferred to insult the king by dying, rather 

14^ 



162 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

than to yield him an inch of Church reformation ! — so 
they are described, and I am not about to deny that 
they made as many sharp points in their religion as 
Christian charity and true reason required. When 
God prepares a hammer, it will not be made of silk. 
If our fathers were uncomfortable men, what great 
character ever lived that was not an uncomfortable 
man to his times ? If they cast off the decrees of Par- 
liament, and took in the decrees of God in their place, 
was it not to be expected, both from what they had cast 
off and from what they had taken, that there would be 
a little more of stiffness and punctilious rigor in the is- 
sue than was requisite ? Or, if they had found a true 
Pope in the Bible, what should follow, but a most lit- 
eral obeisance, even to the slipper of the book? As 
the world, too, of past ages had received their salvation, 
with tremulous awe, in a little sprinkling of holy water, 
or a wafer on the tongue, and they had now learned to 
look for salvation in what they believed, what should 
they do but stand for their mere letters of abstraction, 
as exact and scrupulous, as if the words of faith had 
even as great dignity, as ablutions of the finger or a 
paste in the mouth ? It could not be otherwise. That 
was no age for easy compliances and flowing lines of 
opinion. Whatever was done, must have the cutting 
edge of scruple and over-punctual severity. Only let 
our fathers be judged with that true historic sympathy, 
which is the due of all men, and I ask no more. Then 
it will even be confessed that, by the strictness which ex- 
ceeded reason, they only proved that close fidelity and 



IN THEIR unco:n'sciouskess. 163 

sacred homage to reason, wticli is itself but a name for 
true spiritual honor and greatness. 

I have spoken thus at length of the successes of our 
political and social history, for it is chiefly in these that 
we have our prominence before the world, and seem 
also to ourselves to have achieved results of the greatest 
brilliancy and magnitude. But my subject requires me 
to believe, and I think the signs also indicate that re- 
sults are yet to come, far transcending these in their 
sublimity and their beneficent consequences to man- 
kind. Indeed, what now we call results of history, 
seem to me to be only stages in the preparation of a 
Great and Divine Future, that includes the spiritual 
good and glory and the comprehensive unity of the 
race — exactly that which most truly fulfills the grand 
religious ideal of Robinson and the New England fa- 
thers. 

Their "word was ^'Eeformation" — "the completion 
of the Eeformation;" not Luther's nor Calvin's, they 
expressly say; they can not themselves image it. 
Hitherto it is unconceived by men. God must reveal 
it in the light that breaks forth from Him. And this 
He will do, in His own good time. It is already clear 
to us that, in order to any farther progress in this di- 
rection, it was necessary for a new movement to begin, 
that should loosen the joints of despotism and emanci- 
pate the mind of the world. And in order to this a 
new republic must be planted and have time to grow. 
It must be seen rising up in the strong majesty of free- 



164 THE FOUNDERS GREAT 

dom and youth, outstripping the old prescriptive world 
in enterprise and the race of power, covering the ocean 
with its commerce, spreading out in populous swarms 
of industry — planting, building, educating, framing 
constitutions, rushing to and fro in the smoke and 
thunder of travel along its mighty rivers, across its in- 
land seas, over its mountain-tops from one shore to the 
other, strong in order as in liberty, a savage continent 
become the field of a colossal republican empire, whose 
name is a name of respect and a mark of desire to the 
longing eyes of mankind. And then, as the fire of 
new ideas and hopes darts electrically along the nerves 
of feeling in the millions of the race, it will be seen that 
a new Christian movement also begins with it. Call it 
reformation, or formation, or by whatever name, it is 
irresistible because it is intangible. In one view it is 
only destruction. The State is loosened from the 
Church. The Church crumbles down into fragments. 
Superstition is eaten away by the strong acid of liberty, 
and spiritual despotism flies affrighted from the broken 
loyalty of its metropolis. • Protestantism also, divided 
and subdivided by its dialectic quarrels, falls into the 
finest, driest powder of disintegration. Be not afraid. 
The new order crystallizes only as the old is dissolved ; 
and no sooner is the old unity of orders and authorities 
effectually dissolved, than the reconstructive afiinities 
of a new and better unity begin to appear in the solu- 
tion. Eepugnances melt away. Thought grows catho- 
lic. Men look for good in each other, as well as evil. 
The crossings of opinion, by travel and books, and the 



IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 165 

intermixture of races and religions, issue in freer, 
broader views of the Cliristian trutTi; and so the 
'^Church of the Future," as- it has been called, gravi- 
tates inwardly towards those terms of brotherhood in 
which it may coalesce and rest. I say not or believe, 
that Christendom will be Puritanized, or Protestant- 
ized ; but what is better than either, it w411 be Chris- 
tianized. It will settle thus into a unity, probably not 
of form, but of practical assent and love — a Common- 
wealth of the Spirit, as much stronger in its unity than 
the. old satrapy of priestly despotism, as our republic is 
stronger than any other government of the world. 

And this, I conceive, is the true issue of that ^' great 
hope and inward zeal " which impelled our fathers in 
the migration. Our political successes are but means 
to this magnificent end — instruments, all, and powers 
of religion, as we have seen them to be its natural 
effects and fruits. All kinds of progress, political and 
spiritual, coalesce and work together in our history ; 
and will do so in all the race, till finally it is raised to 
its true summit of greatness, felicity, and glory, in God 
and religion. And when that summit is reached, it 
will be found that, as Church and State must be parted 
in the crumbling and disintegrating processes of free- 
dom, so, in freedom attained, they w411 coalesce again, 
not as Church and State, but in such kind of unity as 
well-nigh removes the distinction — the peace and love 
and world-wide brotherhood, established under moral 
ideas, and the eternal truths of God's eternal kingdom. 



166 THE FOUNDERS GREAT, ETC. 

Glory enough, then, is it for our sublime Fathers, to 
have filled an office so conspicuous in the preparation 
of results so magnificent. I am not unaware of the de- 
fects in their character. Nay, I would rather see and 
confess, than hide them ; for, since we can not be gods 
ourselves, it is better to be descended of a race of men 
than of 2:ods. But, w^hen I consider the unambitious 
sacrifice they made of their comforts and their country, 
how little they were moved by vagrant theories and 
projects of social revolution, how patient of hardships, 
how faithful to their convictions, how little they ex- 
pected of men, how confidently they trusted their un- 
known future to God, and, then, what honor God has 
put upon them, and what greater honor he is preparing 
for their name, before the good and the free of the 
blessed ages of the future, I confess that I seem even to 
have offended in attempting to speak their eulogy. 
Silence and a bare head are a more fit tribute than 
words. Or, if we will erect to them a more solid and 
yet worthier monument, there is none so appropriate 
as to learn from them, and for ourselves to receive, the 
principle they have so nobly proved, that — the way 

OF GREATNESS IS THE WAY OF DUTY. 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE.* 



Friends and Fellow-Citizens : 

The occasion wliich has brought us together cele- 
brates another stage of advance in the cause of public 
education, in our commonwealth. When I accepted 
the call to address you on this occasion, I designed to 
prepare a theme immediately related to the subject of 
popular education itself But on more mature consid- 
eration, taking counsel also of others, I have concluded 
that, as the occasion belongs to the state, and as I am 
to speak to the Legislature of the state, I can not do 
better than to make the state itself — its character and 
wants and prospects — -the subject of my address. And 
I do it the more readily, because of the conviction I 
feel, and hope also to produce, that, if there be any 
state in the world, whose history itself is specially ap- 
propriate to a festival of popular education, that state is 
Connecticut, 

It is a fact often remarked by the students of history, 
that all the states or nations that have most impressed 

* A Speecli for Connecticut, delivered "before the Legislature of the State, 
at tlie inangnration of the Noriijal Scliool, Now Britain, June 4, 18")!. 



168 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

the world, by their high civilization and their genius, 
have been small in territorial extent. If we ask for the 
reason, it is probably because society is sufficiently con- 
centrated only in small communities, to produce the in- 
tensest development of mind and character. Hence it 
is not in the ancient Eoman or Persian empires, but in 
little sterile Attica, territorially small in comparison 
even with Connecticut, that the chief lawgivers, philos- 
ophers, orators, poets of antiquity, have their spring; 
sending out their unarmed thoughts to subdue and oc- 
cupy the mind of the world, even in the far distant 
ages of time. So again, and probably for a similar rea- 
son, it is not in the great kingdoms or empires of West- 
ern Europe, that the quickening powers of modern his- 
tory have their birth ; but in the Florentine Eepublic, 
in Flanders and the free commercial cities, in Saxony, 
Holland and England. Here, in one, is the birthplace 
of modern art. Here it is, in another, that manufac- 
tures originate and flourish. Here, again, it is that, 
having no territory at home, commerce builds its ships 
and sends them out to claim the seas for a territory. 
Here is the cradle of the Eeformation. Here the free 
principles of government, that are running but not yet 
glorified, took their spring. 

In view of facts like these, it is a great excellence of 
our confederated form of government, that it combines 
the advantages both of great and small communities. 
We have a common country, and yet we have many 
small countries ; a vast republic that embosoms many 
small republics, each possessing a qualified sovereignty, 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 169 

each to liave a character and make a history of its own. 
There is brought into play, in this manner, without in- 
fringing at all on the general unity of the republic, a 
more special and homelike feeling in the several states 
(sharpened by mutual comparison) which, as a tonic 
power in society, is necessary to the highest develop- 
ments of character and civilization. Spreading out, in 
a vast republican empire that spans a continent, we are 
thus to be condensed into small communities, each dis- 
tinctly and completely conscious of itself, and all acting 
as mutual stimulants to each other. Nor is anything 
more to be desired, in this view, than that we preserve 
our distinct position as states, and embody as much of 
a state feeling as possible, about our several centers of 
pubhc life and action. Let Virginia have her "cava- 
liers" and her "old dominion." Let Massachusetts be 
conscious always of Massachusetts, and let every man 
of her sons, in every grade and party, exult in the hon- 
ors that crown her history. Let the Vermonter speak 
of his "Grreen Mountain state," with the sturdy pride 
of a mountaineer. Let the sons of Rhode Island exult 
in the history and spirit of their little fiery republic. 
This state feeling has an immense value, and the want 
of it is a want much to be deplored. I would even 
prefer to have this feeling developed so strongly as to 
create some friction between the citizens of the differ- 
ent states, rather than to have it deficient. 

Pardon me if I suggest the conviction, that this feel- 
ing is not as decided and distinct, in our state, as it 
may be and ought to be. It is our misfortune that we 

In 



170 HISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. 

hold a position midway between two capital cities ; 
that of New England on one side, and that of the west- 
ern world itself on the other. To these we go as our 
market places. From these we get our fashions, our 
news, and too often our prejudices and opinions; or, 
what is worse, just that neutral state of both, which is 
created by the very incongruous mixture they produce. 
Meantime, it is a great misfortune that we have no cap- 
ital of our own, or if any, a migratory capital. For 
public sentiment, in order to get firmness and become 
distinctly conscious, must have fixed objects about 
which it may embody itself. A capital which is here 
and there is neither here nor there. It is no capital, 
but a symbol rather of vagrancy, and probably of what 
is worse, of local jealousies which are too contemptible 
to be inspiring. Besides we are too little aware of our 
own noble history as a state. The historical writers of 
Massachusetts have been more numerous and better 
qualified than ours, and they have naturally seen the 
events of New England history, with the eyes of metro, 
politans. We have, as yet, nothing that can be called 
a just and spirited history of our state, and the mass of 
our citizens seem to suppose that we have no history 
worthy attention. It is only a dry record, they fancy, 
of puritanical severities, destitute of incident and too 
unheroic to support any generous emotions. Our sense 
of it is expressed in the single epithet, ^^the blue laio 
statey Never were any people more miserably de- 
frauded. Meantime we are continually sinking in rela- 
tive power, as a member of the confederacy. Our pub- 



HISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. 171 

lie men no longer represent the fourtli state in the 
Union, as in the Revolution, but the little, compara- 
tively declining state of Connecticut. And the danger 
is that, as we sink in the relative scale of numbers, the 
little enthusiasm left us will die out as a spark on our 
altars, and we shall become "as insignificant in the scale 
of moral, as of territorial, consequence. 

Accordingly it becomes a very interesting question 
to the people of our state, what shall we do to maintain 
our wonted position of respect and power ? — how shall 
we kindle and feed the true fire of public feeling neces- 
sary to our character and our standing in the republic? 
If there be a citizen present, of any sect or party, who 
can see no interest in such a problem, to him I have 
nothing to say. The man who does not wish to love 
and honor the state in which he and his children are 
born, has no heart in his bosom, and it is not in any 
words or aTguments of mine, certainly, to give him 
what the sterility of his nature denies. 

It will occur to you at once, in the problem raised, 
that what any people can be and ought to be, depends, 
in a principal degree, on what they have been. And 
so much is there in this principle, that scarcely any- 
thing is necessary, as it seems to me, to exalt our pub- 
lic consciousness and set us forward in the path of hon- 
or, but simply to receive the true idea of our history 
and be kindled with a genuine inspiration derived from 
a just recollection of the past. 

In this view it is, that I now propose to give you a 



172 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

sketch, or outline of our history ; or perhaps I should 
rather say, an historic estimate of our standing as a 
member of the republic. In giving this outline, or es- 
timate, I must deal, of course, with facts that are famil- 
iar to many ; but we have a history of such transcend- 
ent beauty, freshened by so many inspiring and heroic 
incidents, that we should not easily tire under the re- 
cital, however familiar. Nothing should tire us but 
the mortifying fact, that as a people, we have not yet 
attained even to the sense of those public honors that 
are laid up for us in the history we inherit. Mr. Ban- 
croft, the historian, thoroughly acquainted with the rel- 
ative character and merit of the American States, not 
long ago said, — " There is no state in the Union, and I 
know not any in the world, in whose early history, if I 
were a citizen, I could find more of which to be proud, 
and less that I should wish to blot." My own convic- 
tion is, that this early historj^, though not the most 
prominent, is really the most beautiful that was ever 
permitted to an}^ state or people in the world. 

In tracing this outline, I shall be obliged to make 
some reference to that of other states, but I will en- 
deavor not to make the comparison odious. I must in- 
fringe, a little, in particular, on some of the claims of 
Massachusetts, and therefore I ought to say beforehand, 
that no one is more sensible than I to the historic merit, 
or rejoices more heartily in the proud eminence of that 
state, as a member of the republic, for it is a member 
without which, indeed, the republic would want a nec- 
essary support of its character and felicity. It can the 



HISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. 178 

better afford to yield us, therefore, what is our own ; or 
rather can the less afford to diminish our just honors, 
by claiming to itself what is quite unnecessary to its 
true pre-eminence of name, and its metropolitan posi 
tion as a state. 

It may well be a subject of pride to our state that the 
original settlement of the Connecticut and New Haven 
colonies, afterwards called Connecticut, comprised an 
amount of character and talent so very remarkable. 

There was Ludlow, said to have been the first law- 
yer of the colonies, assisting at the construction of the 
first written constitution originated in the new world ; 
one that was the type of all that came after, even that 
of the Eepublic itself. Whether it was that he was too 
much of a lawyer to be a hearty Puritan, or had too 
much of the unhappy and refractory element in his 
temper to be comfortable anywhere, it is somewhat 
difficult to judge. But he became dissatisfied, removed 
from Hartford to the Fairfield settlement, and after- 
wards to Virginia. The casual hints and traditions left 
us of his character, impress the feeling that he was a 
very remarkable man, and excite in us the wish that a 
more adequate account of his somewhat irregular his- 
tory had been preserved to us. ' 

There was Haynes, also, the first Governor, a man of 
higher moral qualities, and different, though not per- 
haps inferior, accomplishments. He was a gentleman 
of fortune, holding an elegant seat in Essex. But the 
American wilderness, with a right to his own religious 

15-- 



iT-i HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

convictions, he could easily prefer to the charms of 
affluence and refinement. Turning his back upon 
these, he came over to Boston. And it is a sufficient 
proof of his character and ability that, during his short 
stay there, he ^as elected Governor of the Massachu- 
setts colony. In the new colony that came out after- 
wards to settle on the banks of the Connecticut, he was 
leader and father from the beginning. He was a man 
of great practical wisdom and personal address ; liberal 
in his opinions, firm in his piety, a man every way fit 
to lay republican foundations. 

Governor Hopkins, a rich Turkey merchant of Lon- 
don, was another of the founders ; a man of less grav- 
ity, though not inferior in the qualities of fortune, or 
personal excellence, and superior to all in his great mu- 
nificence. By his bequest the Grammar schools of 
Hartford and New Haven, and the Professorship of Di- 
vinity in Harvard College, were founded. His talents 
are sufficiently evinced by the fact that, returning on a 
visit to his estate and his friends in England, he was 
detained there by an unexpected promotion from 
Cromwell to be Commissioner of the Navy and Admi- 
ralty. 

Governor Winthrop, or as he is commonly called, 
the younger TTinthrop, was the most accomphshed 
scholar and gentleman of New England. Educated to 
society, liberalized in his views by foreign travel, which 
in that day was a more remarkable distinction than it 
is at present, he was qualified by his manners and ad- 
dress thus cultivated, to shine as a courtier in the high- 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 175 

est circles of influence. A sufficient proof of his power 
in this way, may be found in the fact that the Connec- 
ticut charter was obtained by him ; an instrument so 
republican, so singularly liberal in its terms, that it has 
greatly puzzled the historians to guess by what means 
any king could have been induced to give it, and es- 
pecially to give it to a Puritan. 

John Mason, the soldier, I will speak of in another 
place, only observing here that he was trained to arms 
under Lord Fairfax in Holland, and gave so high a proof 
of his valor and capacity, both there and here, that he 
was solicited by Cromwell to return to England, and 
occupy the high post of Major Greneral in his army. 

Thomas Hooker, another of the founders, and first 
minister of the Hartford colony, was distinguished as a 
graduate and fellow of Cambridge University, and 
more as a minister and preacher of the established 
church. He was called the Luther of New England, 
for the reason, I suppose, that the sturdy emphasis and 
thunder tone of his style resembled him to the gTcat 
Eeformer. Whenever he visited Boston, after his re- 
moval to Connecticut, crowds rushed to hear him as 
the great preacher of the colonies. As a specimen of 
physical humanitj^, if we may trust the descriptions 
given of his person, he was one of the most remarkable 
of men; uniting the greatest beauty of countenance 
with a height and breadth of frame almost gigantic. 
The works he has left, more voluminous and various 
than those of any other of the New England founders, 
Jire his monument. 



176 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

John Davenport, of the New Haven colony, was a 
different, though by no means inferior, man. He was 
a son of the mayor of Coventry, a student, and after- 
wards Bachelor of Divinity, at Oxford University. 
Settled as the incumbent of St. Stephen's Church, in 
London, he exerted great influence and power among 
the clergy of the metropolis. His effect lay more ex- 
clusively than Hooker's, in the rigid, argumentative 
vigor of his opinions. Probably no other, unless per- 
haps we except John Cotton, impressed himself more 
deeply on the churches of New England. 

Governor Eaton, of the New Haven colony, had be- 
come rich, by his great and judicious operations as a 
merchant in the trade of the Baltic. Attracting, in this 
way, the attention of the court, he was honored as the 
King's Ambassador at the court of Denmark ; evidence 
sufficiently clear of the high estimation in which he was 
held, and also of his talents and character — a character 
not diminished by the noble virtues and the high ca- 
pacities, revealed in his long and beautifully paternal 
administration as a Christian ruler here. 

Desborough, the New Haven colony soldier, after- 
wards returned to England and held the office of Major 
General in Cromwell's army, a fact which sufficiently 
exhibits him. 

Such were nine of the original founders of Connecti- 
cut. What one of them has left a blot on his char- 
acter, or that of the state? What one of them ever 
failed to fill his place? And that, if I am right, is the 
truest evidence of merit ; not the renown which place 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 177 

and circumstance may give to a far inferior merit, or 
whicli vain ambition, rioting for place, may be able to 
achieve. Is it not a most singular felicity, that onr lit- 
tle state, planted in a remote wilderness, should have 
had, among its founders, nine master spirits and leaders, 
so highly accomplished, so worthy to be reverenced for 
their talents and their virtues ? 

I have spoken of the civil constitution of the Hart- 
ford or Connecticut colony. Virginia began her exper- 
iment under martial law. The emigrants in the May- 
flower are sometimes spoken of as having adopted a 
civil constitution before the landing at Plymouth ; but 
it will be found that the brief document called by that 
name, is only a '^covenant to be a body politic," not a 
proper constitution. The Massachusetts or Boston col- 
ony had the charter of a trading company, under cover 
of which, transferred to the emigrants, they maintained 
a civil organization. It was reserved to the infant col- 
ony on the Connecticut, only three years after the set- 
tlement, to model the first properly American constitu- 
tion — a work in which the framers were permitted to 
give body and shape, for the first time, to the genuine 
republican idea, that dwelt as an actuating force, or in- 
most sense, in all the ISTew England colonies. The 
trading-company governor and assistants of the Massa- 
chusetts colony, having emigrated bodily, and brought 
over the company charter with them, had been con- 
strained to allow some modifications, by which their re- 
lation, as directors of a stock subscription, were trans- 



178 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

formed into a more properly civil and popular relation. 
In this manner, the government vras gradually becom- 
ing a genuine elective republic, according to our sense 
of the term. The progress made was wholly in the di- 
rection taken by the framers of the Connecticut consti- 
tution ; though, as yet, they had matured no such re- 
sult. xVt the very time when our constitution was 
framed, they were endeavoring, in Massachusetts, to 
comfort the *' hereditary gentlemen" by erecting them 
into a kind of American House of Lords, called the 
^* Standing Council for Life.'' The deputies might be 
chosen from the colony at large, and were not required 
to be inhabitants of the town by which they were 
chosen. The freemen were required to be members of 
the church, and all the officers stood on the theocratic, 
or church basis, in the same way. They were also de- 
bating, at this time, the civil admissibility or propriety 
of dropping one governor and choosing another ; Cot- 
ton and many of the principal men insisting that the 
office was a virtual freehold, or vested right ! Holding 
these points in view, how evident is the distinctness 
and the projDcr originality of the Connecticut constitu- 
tion. It organizes a government elective, annually, in 
all the departments. It ordains that no person shall be 
chosen governor for two successive yeai^s. It requires 
the deputies to be inhabitants and representatives of 
the towns where they are chosen. The elective fran- 
chise is not limited to members of the church, but con- 
ditioned simply on admission to the rights of an elector 
by a major vote of the town. In short, this constitu- 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 179 

tion, the first one written out, as a complete frame of 
civil order, in the new world, embodies all the essential 
features of the constitutions of our states, and of the 
Eepublic itself, as they exist at the present day. It is 
the free representative plan, which now distinguishes 
our country in the eyes of the world. 

^'Nearly two centuries have elapsed," says Mr. Ban- 
croft, ^Hhe world has been made wiser by various ex- 
perience, political institutions have become the theme on 
which the most powerful and cultivated minds have been 
employed, dynasties of kings have been dethroned, re- 
called, dethroned again, and so many constitutions have 
been framed or reformed, stifled or subverted, that 
memory may despair of a complete catalogue ; but the 
people of Connecticut have found no reason to deviate 
essentially from the government established by their 
' fathers. History has ever celebrated the commanders 
of armies, on which victory has been entailed, the he- 
roes who have won laurels in scenes of carnage and ra- 
pine. Has it no place for the founders of states — the 
wise legislators who struck the rock in the wilderness, 
and the waters of libertj^ gushed forth in copious and 
perennial fountains ? They who judge of men, by their 
influence on public happiness, and by the services they 
render to the human race, will never cease to honor the 
memory of Hooker and Haynes.'' 

Had Mr. Bancroft included, with the names of Hook- 
er and Haynes, that also of Ludlow, placing it first in 
the list, I suspect that his ver}^ handsome and just 
tribute of honor would have found its mark more 



180 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE 

exactly.^ We know that Mr. Ludlow on two several 
occasions after this, was appointed by the Legislature 
to draft a code of laws for the state, and there is much 
reason, in that fact, to suppose that he drew the Consti- 
tution itself. His impracticable, refractory temper set 
him on farther, as many suppose, in the direction of de- 
mocracy, than any other of the distinguished men of 
the emigration; and they very naturally imagine, for 
this reason, that they see his hand, in particular, in the 
new Constitution framed. 

I must not omit to mention, what is specially re- 
markable in this document, that no mention whatever 
is made in it, either of king or Parliament, or the least 
intimation given of allegiance to the mother country. 
On the contrary, an oath of allegiance is required di- 
rectly to the state. And it is expressly declared that 
in the "General Court," as organized, shall exist "the 
Supreme Power of the Commonwealth." 

The precedence we had thus gained in the matter of 
constitutional history, I am happy to add, was honora- 
bly maintained afterwards, in the formation of the Con- 
stitution of the Eepublic itself; for it is a fact, which 
those who are wont to sneer at the blueness and legisla- 
tive incapacity of our state may be challenged also to 

* Since this discourse was delivered, the short-hand report of a Sermon 
by Hooker has been discovered, and, by the great ingenuity of J. Ham- 
mond Trumbull, Esq., deciphered, in which it is clearly made out, or 
shown, that Hooker was the mover of this Constitution ; that its princi- 
pal provisions were shaped by his suggestion; and, since this was the 
first of all the civil Constitutions of America, that they all have a lineal 
derivation which connects them, more or less distinctly, with the pulpit- 
even the pulpit of the Hartford pastor. 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 181 

remember, that Connecticut took tlie lead in proposing 
and, by the high abilities and the strenuous exertions 
of Ellsworth and Sherman, finally carried that distinc- 
tion of the Constitution of the United States, which is 
most fundamental and peculiar to it as a frame of civil 
government, and which now is just beginning, as never 
before, to fix the attention and attract the admiration 
of the world. I speak here of the federative element, 
by which so many sovereign states are kept in distinct 
activity, while included under a higher sovereignty. 
When the Convention were assembled that framed the 
Constitution of the Eepublic, they were met, at the 
threshold, by a very important question, viz., — Wheth- 
er the Constitution to be framed should be the Consti- 
tution of a *' Nation," or of a ^'Confederacy of states." 
Mr. Calhoun gave the true history of the struggle, in 
his speech before the Senate of the United States, Feb. 
12th, 1847. ''The three states, Massachusetts, Penn- 
sylvania, and Virginia," he said, "were the largest and 
were actively and strenuously in favor of a ' National ' 
government. The two leading spirits were Mr. Hamil- 
ton of New York, probably the author of the resolu- 
tion, and Mr. Madison of Virginia. In the early stages 
of the Convention, there was a majority in favor of a 
' National ' government. But in this stage there were 
but eleven states in the Convention. In process of 
time New Hampshire came in, a very great addition to 
the federal side, which now became predominant. It 
is owing mainly to the states of Connecticut and New 
Jersey that we have a ' Federal ' instead of a ' National ' 

16 



182 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

government — the best government instead of the worst 
and most intolerable on earth. Who are the men of 
these states to whom we are indebted for this admirable 
government? I will name them — their names ought 
to be engraven on brass and live forever. They were 
Chief Justice Ellsworth, Roger Sherman, and Judge 
Patterson of New Jersey, The other states farther 
South were blind — they did not see the future. But to 
the coolness and sagacity of these three men, aided by 
a few others, not so prominent, we owe the present 
Constitution." 

Such is the tribute paid to Connecticut by this very 
distinguished statesman of South Carolina. To have 
claimed this honor to ourselves might have been offens- 
ive. To receive it, when it is tendered, is no more than 
a duty. Here then we are in 1851, thirty-one states, 
skirting two oceans, still one republic, under one tribu- 
nal of justice, under one federal Constitution which we 
boast as a frame of order that will sometime shelter the 
rights and accommodate the manifold interests of two 
hundi^ed millions of people — the greatest achievement 
of legislative wisdom in the modern history of the 
world — and for Connecticut, who came as near being 
the author of these noble appointments as she could, 
and do it by the votes of other states — for her the prin- 
cipal honor and reward of many is a shiiig of derision, 
and the sneer that calls her the blue law state ! 

Since I am speaking here of our agency in the matter 
of laws and constitutions, let me go a little farther, and 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 183 

show you with what justice our laws can be made, as 
they so commonly are, a subject of derision. The de- 
risive epithet, by which we are so often distinguished, 
was given us by the tory renegade, Peters, who, while 
better men were fighting the battles of their country, 
was skulking in London, and getting his bread there, 
by the stories he could fabricate about Connecticut. 
The mendacity of his character and writings has been a 
thousand times exposed, and the very laws that he 
published as the ^'blue," shown to be forgeries invent- 
ed by himself; and yet there are many, I am sorry to 
say, not soberly believing that wooden nutmegs were 
ever manufactured in Connecticut, who nevertheless 
accept the blue law fiction as the real fact of history. 
They do not understand, as they properly might, 
that the two greatest dishonors that ever befell Connec- 
ticut, are the giving birth to Benedict Arnold and the 
Reverend Samuel Peters — unless it be a third, that she 
has given birth to so many who, denouncing the 
treason of one, are . none the less ready to believe and 
reiterate the equally perfidious and shameful lies of the 
other. 

There is no state in the civilized world whose laws, 
headed by the noble CoDstitution of the Hartford Colony, 
are more simple and righteous ; none where the redress 
of wrongs is less expensive, or less cumbered by tedious 
and useless technicalities. It is even doubtful whether 
the new code tof practice in New York, which is just 
now attracting so much attention abroad, requires to be 
named as an exception. The first law Reports, publish- 



184 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

ed in the United States, were Kirby's Connecticut Ee- 
ports. The first law school of the nation was the cele- 
brated school of Judge Eeeve. at Litchfield, a school 
which gave the first impulse to law as a science in our 
country. Chief Justice Ellsworth, Judges Smith, Gould, 
Kent, AValworth, and I know not how many others 
most distinguished in legal science in our country, were 
sons of Connecticut. Judge Ellsworth was chairman 
of the committee of Congress that prepared the Judici- 
ary Act, by which the Supreme Court of the Xation 
was organized ; and it will be found that some of the 
pro^'isions of that Act that are most peculiar, are copied 
verbatim from the statutes of Connecticut. The prac- 
tice of the Supreme Court is often said to resemble the 
practice of Connecticut more than that of any" other 
state. And, what is more, the form of the Supreme 
Court itself, as a tribunal of law, chancery, admiralty, 
and criminal jurisdiction, comprised in one, is copied 
from the laws of Massachusetts and Connecticut. 

It is true, indeed, reverting to the earlier laws of the 
commonwealth, that we find severities enacted against 
the Baptists and Quakei^, precisely as in Virginia, New 
York, and Massachusetts. How far these laws were 
executed in Connecticut, or under what conditions, I 
will not undertake to say; but they seem to have 
been aimed only at a class of fanatics, who made it a 
point of duty to violate the religious convictions of ev- 
ery body else ; bringing their logs of wood to chop on 
the church steps on Sunday, and their spinning-wheels 
to spin by the door, and walking the streets in the 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 185 

questionable grace of nudity, to testify against the sins 
of the people. In 1708, the English Quakers petition- 
ed the government against these laws, when Governor 
Saltonstall wrote over in reply, to Sir Henry Ashurst, 
as follows, — *'I may observe, from the matter of their 
objections, that they have a further reach than to ob- 
tain liberty for their own persuasion, as they pretend ; 
(for many of the laws they object against concern them 
no more than if they were Turks or Jews,) for as there 
never was, that I know of, for this twent}^ years that I 
have resided in this government, any one Quaker, oi 
other person, that suffered upon the account of his dif- 
ferent persuasion in religious matters from the body of 
this people, so neither is there any of the society of 
Quakers anywhere in this government, unless one fam- 
ily or two, on the line between us and Xew York; 
which yet I am not certain of." 

Episcopacy was tolerated here by a public act, when, 
as yet, there were not seventy families in the state of that 
denomination — at the very time, too, when there were 
two Presbyterian clergymen lying in prison, at New 
York, for the crime of preaching a sermon and baptiz- 
ing a child. After several months they obtained their 
release, by paying a fine of £500 sterling. Forty years 
later, Dr. Eogers, a Presbyterian clergyman, was de- 
terred, by threats of a similar penalty, from preaching 
in Virginia. The whole system of tithes was there in 
force, as stiff as in Ireland now. Fees for marrying, 
churching, and burying were established by law. In 
1618, a law was passed in Virginia, requiring every 

16- 



186 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

person to attend church on Sundays and church holi- 
days, on penalty of '4ying neck and heels," as it was 
called, for one night, and being held to labor as a slave, 
by the colony, for the week following. Eleven years 
after, this penalty was changed, to a fine of one pound 
of tobacco, '* to be paid to the minister/^ These facts I 
cite, not to bring reproach on other states, but simply 
to show that religious intolerance was the manner of 
the times. If, in the Xew Haven colony, it is a re- 
proach that only members of the church were permitted 
to vote, the same was true, under the English constitu- 
tion, even down to within our memory. There is no 
suf&cient evidence that any person was ever executed 
for witchcraft in this state, though there were several 
trials, and one or two convictions ; which the Governor 
and Council contrived, I believe, in one way or anoth- 
er, to release.^ Governor Winthrop professed sincere 
scruples about the crime itself. How it was in Massa- 
chusetts is sufficiently known to us all. An execution 
for this crime took place in Switzerland, in 1760 ; at 
Wurtzberg in Germany, in 1749; also in Scotland, in 
1722. And, as late as 1716, a poor woman, and her 
daughter only nine years old, were publicly hanged in 
England, for selling their souls to the devil, and for 
raising a storm by the conjuration of pulling oflF their 
stockings. The English statute against witchcraft stood 
unrepealed, even down to 1736. 

I confess I was never able to see why so hea\^ a 

* See Kingsley's Historical discourse (p. 101) where a different opinion 
is held. 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 187 

share of the odium of this kind of legislation should fall 
on the state of Connecticut ; whose only reproach, in 
the matter is, that she was not farther in advance of the 
civilized world, by another half century. If the citi- 
zens of other states are able sometimes to amuse them- 
selves at our expense, we certainly are not required to 
add to their amusement by an over-sensitive resentment. 
But if any son or citizen of Connecticut is willing to ac- 
cept and appropriate, as characteristic of its history, the 
slang epithet which perpetuates a tory lie and forgery, 
then I have only to say that we have just so much rea- 
son to be ashamed of the state — on his account. He is 
either raw enough to be taken by a very low impos- 
ture, or base enough in feeling to enjoy a sneer at his 
mother's honor. 

We have some right, I think, to another kind of dis- 
tinction, which we have never asserted; that, namely, 
of being the colony most distinctively independent in 
our character and proceedings, in the times of the co- 
lonial history, previous to the revolution. We were 
able to be so, in part, from our more retired and shel- 
tered position, and partly, also, because of the very pe- 
culiar terms of our charter. Massachusetts, Virginia, 
New York, Pennsylvania, all the other states, with the 
exception of Rhode Island, were obliged by their char- 
ters, or the vacation of their charters, to accept a chief 
executive, or governor, appointed by the crown. These 
royal governors had a negative upon the laws. They 
personated the king, maintaining a kind of court pomp 



188 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

and majesty, overawing the people, thwarting their 
legislation, wielding a legal control, in right of the 
king, over the whole military force, much as at the 
present day in Canada. But the charter obtained for 
Connecticut, by the singular address of Winthrop, al- 
lowed us to choose our own governor and exercise all * 
the functions of civil order. And so we grew up, as a 
people, unawed by the pageants of royalty, a race of 
simple, self-governing republicans. 

For three little towns, on the Connecticut, to declare 
independence of the mother country, we can easily see, 
would have been the part of madness — probably they 
had not so much as a thought of it — and yet they had 
a spmething, a wish, an instinct, call it what you will, 
which could write itself properly out, in their constitu- 
tion, only in the words, •' Supreme Power." And I see 
not how these words, formally asserting the sovereignty 
of their General Court, escaped chastisement ; unless it 
was that they found a shelter for the crime, in their re- 
moteness and the obscurity of their position. In this 
view, there was a kind of sublimity in the sturdy 
growth of their sheltered and silent state. They had 
no theories of democracy to assert. They put on no 
brave airs for liberty. But they loved their conscience 
and their religion, and in just the same degree, loved 
not to be meddled with. In this habit their children 
grew up. Their very intelligence became an eye of 
jealousy, and they acknowledged the right of the king, 
much as when we acknowledge the lightning, in lifting 
a rod to carrv it — off! But when the kinsr came down 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 189 

upon theirij in some act of authority or royal interfer- 
ence that touched the security of their principles or 
their position, then it was as if the Great Being, who 
had ^'ordained whatsoever comes to pass," had ordained 
that some things should not come to pass. 

On as many as four several occasions, during the co- 
lonial history, they set themselves in open conflict with 
the king's authority, and triumphed by their determin- 
ation. First in the case of the regicide Judges, secreted 
at New Haven ; when Davenport took for his text — 
^' Make thy shadow as night in the midst of noon, hide 
the outcasts, bewray not him that wandereth." The 
king's officers were active in the search ; but, for some 
reason, the noon was as the night, and their victims 
could not be found. Massachusetts expostulated with 
the refractory people of iSTew Haven, representing how 
much they would endanger all the colonies, if the}" did 
not hasten to address His Majesty in some proper ex- 
cuse, to which they replied that they were ignorant of 
the form ! 

Again, by rallying a force at Saybrook, when Sir 
Edmund Andross landed there, to proclaim the new 
patent of the Duke of York, and take possession of the 
town — -silencing him in the act, and compelling him to 
return to his ships. 

A third time, when this same officer came on to 
Hartford, to vacate the charter — a passage of history 
commemorated by the noble oak, whose gnarled trunk 
and limbs still remain, to represent the crabbed inde- 
pendence of the men, who would not yield their rights 



190 * HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

to the royal mandate. May the old oak live for- 
ever ! 

And yet a fourth time, by asserting and vindicating, 
what is the essential attribute of political independence, 
viz., the control and sovereignty of their own military 
force. Governor Fletcher came on to Hartford, from 
New York, to demand the control of the militia in the 
king's name; and when he insisted on reading the 
proclamation, he was drummed into silence by com- 
mand of Wadsworth, the chief officer. When the 
drummer slacked, the word was, ^'Drum, I say;" and 
to the Governor, ^' Stop, Sir, or I will make the sun 
shine through you in an instant." He withdrew, the 
point was carried, and the control of the military was 
retained. After that, when Pitt at the height of his 
power wanted troops from Connecticut, he sent the re- 
quest of a levy to the Legislature, not a military order. 

It is not my design, as you have seen, to rejDresent, 
in these facts of history, that we had consciously and 
purposely set up for independence ; but only that we 
had so much of the self-governing spirit in us, nourish- 
ed by the scope of our charter, and sheltered by our 
more retired position, that we took our independence 
before we knew it, and had the reality before we made 
the claim. 

In Massachusetts, the metropolitan colony, which had 
a more open relation to the mother country, the spirit 
of independence was checked continually by considera- 
tions of prudence, and, at Boston especially, by tlie 
presence of the king and a kind of court influence 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 191 

maintained by the royal governors. Accordingly tlie 
Eey. Daniel Barber, who went on with the Connecticut 
troops to Boston, at the first outbreak of the Eevolu- 
tion, says, — "In our march through Connecticut, the 
inhabitants seemed to view us with joy and gladness, 
but when we came into Massachusetts and advanced 
nearer to Boston, the inhabitants, where we stopped, 
seemed to have no better opinion of us than if we had 
been a banditti of rogues and thieves ; which mortified 
our feelings, and drew from us expressions of angry re- 
sentment " — a fact in which we see, what could not be 
otherwise, that the people nearest to the court influence 
in the metropolis, were many of them infected with a 
spirit opposite to the ^ause of the colonies. But here 
in the rear ground, and a little removed from observa- 
tion, it was far otherwise. Here the sturdy spirit found 
room to grow and embody itself, unrestrained by au- 
thority, uncorrupted by mixtures of opposing influence. 
How necessary this sound rear- work of independence 
and homogeneous feeling in Connecticut may have been 
to the confidence, and the finally decisive action, of the 
men who immediately confronted the royal supremacy 
in Massachusetts, we mav never know. Suf&ce it to 
say that the causes of public events most prominent, 
are not always the most real and effective. 

It is noticeable, also, that we went into the revolution 
under peculiar advantages. We were not obliged to 
fall into civil disorganization by ejecting a royal gover- 
nor, in the manner of other colonies. Our state was full 
organized, under a chief magistracy of her own, having 



192 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

command of her own military force, ready to move, 
without loosing a pin in her political fabric. One of 
the royal governors ejected was even sent to Connecti- 
cut for safe keeping. AYe had kept up our fire in the 
rear, making every hamlet and village ring with defi- 
ance, and erecting our poles of liberty on every hill, 
during the very important interval between the passage 
of the Boston port bill and the stamp act. And so 
fierce and universal was the spirit of resistance here, 
that, while the stamps were carried into all the other 
states, no officer of the crown dared undertake the sale 
of them in Connecticut. 

The forwardness of our state in the matter of inde- 
pendence, is sufficiently evinced by the fact that our 
Legislature passed a bill, on the 14th of June previous 
to the memorable 4th of July, instructing her delegates 
to urge an immediate declaration of independence. 
Nor did she sign that declaration by the hands only of 
her own delegates. Two of her descendents in New 
Jersey and one in Georgia, are among the names en- 
rolled in that honored instrument. Georgia withheld 
herself, at first, from the Revolution. But there was a 
little Puritan settlement at Midway in that state, in 
which, as a physician and a man of public influence, 
resided Doctor Hall, a native of Wallingford, and a 
graduate of Yale College. These Midway Puritans 
were resolved to have their part in the Revolution, at 
all hazards. They made choice of Doctor Hall and 
sent him on to the Congress as their delegate. He 
signed the declaration and, the next year, Georgia came 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 193 

forward and took her place, led into the Revolution by 
the hand of Connecticut. Is it then too much to affirm, 
in view of all these facts, that if any state in the Union 
deserves to be called the Independent State, Connecti- 
cut may safely challenge that honor. 

I must also speak of the military honors of our his- 
tory. Martial distinctions are not the highest, and yet 
there is a kind of military glory that can never fade ; 
that, I mean, which is gained in the defense of justice 
and liberty, as distinguished from the idle bravery of 
chivalry, and the rapacious violence of conquest. 

It is abundantly clear, as a fact of history, that our 
two colonies meant, in their public relations with the 
Indian tribes, to fulfill the exactest terms of justice and 
good neighborhood. Still it happened, doubtless, as it 
always will in such cases, that individuals, instigated 
by a spirit of insolence, or by the cupidity of gain, fre- 
quently trespassed on their rights, in acts of bitter out- 
rage. Such wrongs could not be absolutely prevented, 
and, by reason of a diversity of language and the sepa- 
rate, wild habit of the Indians, could not be effectually 
investigated or redressed. Exasperated, in this man- 
ner, they of course would take their revenge in acts of 
violence and blood ; and then it would be necessary to 
arm the public force against them, for the public pro- 
tection. It is very easy to theorize in this matter, and 
say how it should be, but this issue, much as we de- 
plore it, could not well be avoided. 

It is affirmed and, by many, believed, that the Pe- 

17 



194 IIISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. 

quods had been instigated in this manner, to the thirty 
murders perpetrated in their incursions on the rivei 
settlements, during the winter and spring of 1637. Be 
it so, the colony must still be defended. Every settle- 
ment is filled with consternation. They set their watch 
by night, and tend their signal flag by day, to give no- 
tice of enemies. The Pequods have been described to 
them as one of the most numerous and powerful of the 
Indian tribes. They imagine them dwelling in the 
deep woods, guessing how powerful they may be, and 
at what hour the foe may burst upon their settlement, 
here or there, in the fury of savage war. What they 
so long and wearily dread, in the power of their enemy, 
they, of course, magnify. It is no time now for such 
points of casuistry as entertain us, at our distance of 
time. The hour has come, a decisive blow must be 
struck; for the danger and the dread are no longer 
supportable. 

It had also been ascertained that the Pequods were 
endeavoring to enlist all the other tribes, in a common 
cause against the colonies. Massachusetts, accordingly, 
had agreed to join the expedition against them, but at 
what point the junction would be made could not be 
settled beforehand. With his ninety men, a full half 
the able bodied men of the colony, Capt. Mason de- 
scended the river to Saybrook, passed round to the 
Narragansett Bay, and, falling in there with a small 
party of Massachusetts men returning from Block Isl- 
and, made his landing. His inferior officers, when he 
opened his plan, proposing to march directly into the 



HlSTOItlCAL ESTIMATE. 195 

Pequod country, waiting for no junction with the Mas- 
sachusetts troops, strenuously opposed him. They were 
going into an unknown country to meet an unknown 
enemy. What could assure this little hand of men 
against extermination, fighting in the woods with a 
fiei-ce nation of savages? But the chaplain led them to 
God for direction, and they yielded their dissent. And 
here, in the stand of Mason, is, in fact, the battle and 
the victory ; for they came upon the great fort of the 
enemy, after a rapid march, and tr^ok it so completely 
by surprise, that what was to be a battle became only a 
conflagration and a massacre. The glory is not here, 
but in the celerity of movement and the peremptory 
military decision of the leadership. They are too 
few in number to make prisoners of their enemy, 
and another body of the tribe, whose number is un- 
known, are near at hand. Accordingly their work 
must be short and decisive — a work they make it of 
(extermination. We look on the scene with sadness 
and with mixtures of revolted feeling; but we are none 
the less able to see, in this exploit of Mason, with his 
ninety men, why Cromwell w^anted him for a Major 
General in his army. He understands, we perceive, as 
thoroughly as Napoleon, that celerity and decision are 
sometimes necessary elements of success, and even of 
safety. This kind of generalship, too, requires a great 
deal more of nerve and military courage often, than the 
fighting of a hard contested battle, after it is once 
begun. 

This reduction of the Pequods is remarkable as being 



196 HISTORICAL ESTIMATK. 

the first proper military expedition, or trial of arms in 
New England. If they had been wronged, we pity 
them. If not, still we pity them. In any ^-iew, the 
colony has done what it could not avoid, and the long 
agony of their fear is over. Their wives and children 
can sleep in peace. 

Mason returned with his little Puritan legion to 
Hartford, having lost in the encounter but a single 
man ; the guns of the fort at Saybrook booming out 
through the forests, in a salute of victory, as he passed. 
He was immediately complimented, by the Legislature, 
in the appointment of general-in-chief to the colony, 
and Hooker was designated to deliver him his commis- 
sion, in presence of the assembled people. 

Here is a scene for the painter of some future day — I 
see it even now before me. In the distance and behind 
the huts of Hartford, waves the signal flag by which 
the town watch is to give notice of enemies. In the 
foresrround, stands the tall, swart form of the soldier in 
his armor; and before him, in sacred apostolic majesty, 
the manly Hooker. Haynes and Hopkins, with the 
Legislature and the hardy, toil-worn settlers and their 
wives and daughters, are gathered round them in close 
order, gazing with moistened eyes at the hand which 
lifts the open commission to God, and listening to the 
fervent prayer that the God of Israel will endue his ser- 
vant, as heretofore, with courage and counsel to lead 
them in the days of their future peril. True there is 
nothinor classic in this scene. This is no crown be- 
stowed at the Olympic games, or at a Roman triumph, 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 197 

and yet there is a severe, primitive sublimity in the 
picture, that will sometime be invested with feelings of 
the deepest reverence. Has not the time already come, 
w^heri the people of Connecticut will gladly testify that 
reverence, bv a monument that shall make the beautiful 
valley of the Yantic, where Mason sleeps, as beautifully 
historic, and be a mark to the eye, from one of the most 
ancient and loveliest, as well as most populous, towns 
of our ancient commonwealth? 

The conduct of our state, in two other chapters of 
history of a later date, displays a moral dignity, as well 
as military firmness, of which we have the highest rea- 
son to be proud. The Dutch governor of New York, 
it was ascertained, had entered into an alliance with the 
savages, to make war upon the English colonies. The 
Commissioners of these colonies, already united in a 
federal compact with each other, had voted a levy of 
troops for the defense, and assessed the number to be 
raised by each. The Hartford and New Haven colo- 
nies were prompt and indefatigable in their exertions, 
as their own more immediate exposure required. Plym- 
outh was ready and kept her faith, but Massachusetts, 
tempted, for once, to an act of perfidy most sadly con- 
trasted with her noble history, refused ; leaving the Con- 
necticut colonies cruelly exposed to the whole force of 
the enemy. The condition of our peoj^le was one of 
distressing excitement. Every hour, for a whole half 
year, it was expected that the invasion would begin. 
Forts were erected, a small frigate was manned, night 
and day were spent in watching; till, at length, the 

17- 



198 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

victory of the English over the Dutch fleet at sea put 
an end to the danger; only leaving the two colonies of 
Connecticut overwhelmed by enormous expenses incur- 
red for their defense. The indignation was universal. 
And when the commissioners were assembled again, at 
their annual meeting, our Commissioners magnanimous- 
ly refused to sit with those from Massachusetts, without 
some atonement for their ignominious breach of faith 
and duty. 

Then came the turn of Massachusetts. King Philip, 
as he was called, had rallied all the savage tribes of 
New England, for a last, desperate effort to expel and 
exterminate the colonies. The havoc was dreadful — 
whole towns swept away by the nightly incursions 
of the savages, wives and children massacred, com- 
panies of troops surprised and butchered, all the fi^on- 
tier settlements of Massachusetts smoking in blood and 
conflagration. It was the dark day of the colonies, 
and, for a time, it really seemed that they must be ex- 
terminated. Then it was that Connecticut proved her 
fidelity, sending out five companies of troops to the aid 
of Massachusetts. And the combined troops marched 
together, in a cold snowy day, fifteen miles through 
the forests, fought in the deep snow one of the bloodiest 
battles on record, and then marched back, carrying 
their wounded with them, to encamp in the open air. 
The attack was upon the great fort of the Narragan- 
setts, and was led by the Massachusetts troops, in a 
spirit of valor worthy of success. Unable, however, to 
force the entrance, they were obliged, after suffering 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 199 

greatly from tlie enemy, to fall back. The Connecticut 
troops were then brought up, and we may judge of 
their determination by the fact, that nearly one-third 
of their number fell in the assault, and that, out of their 
five captains, three were killed on the spot, and a fourth 
died of his wounds afterwards. The assault was car- 
ried. The second winter, four companies of rangers, 
raised in New London county, were sent out, by turns, 
to scour the Narragansett country, and harrass the en- 
emy by a continual desultory warfare. Finally, the 
tide was turned, and the capture of Philip ended the 
struggle. Thus nobly did Connecticut repay the in- 
justice and wrong of her sister colony. 

We can hardly imagine it, but there was seldom a 
rear in the early history of our state, now so quiet and 
lemote from the turmoils of war, when she was not 
aarching her troops, one way or another, to defend her 
OYn, or more commonly some neighboring settlement — 
to Albany, to Brookfield, to Springfield, to the Narra- 
g&nsett country, to Schenectady, to Crown Point, to 
Louisburg, to Canada — issuing bills of credit, levying, 
all the while, enormous taxes, and maintaining a war- 
like activity scarcely surpassed by Lacedemon itself. 
There was never a spark of chivalry in her leaders, 
and yet there was never a coward among them. Their 
courage had the Christian stamp ; it was practical and 
related to duty ; always exerted for some object of de- 
fense and safety. They knew nothing of fighting with- 
ou*: an object, and when they had one, they went to the 
work bravely, simply because it was sound economy to 



200 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

fight well ! We are accustomed to speak of the wars 
of the revolution, but these earlier wars, so little re- 
membered, were far more adventurous and required a 
much stouter endurance. 

When combined with the British forces, our troops 
were, of course, commanded in chief by British leaders, 
and these were generally incompetent to the kind of 
warfare necessary in this country. Scarcely ever did 
they lose a battle or suffer a defeat in these wars, in 
which our provincial captains did not first protest 
against their plan. Sometimes the Parliament were 
constrained to compliment our troops, but more gener- 
ally, if some exploit w^as carried by the prowess of a 
colonial captain, as in the case of Lyman, the hero of 
Crown Point, his superior was knighted and he forgot- 
ten. In the last French war, under Pitt, when a large 
part of her little territory was yet a wilderness, Conneo 
ticut raised and kept in the field, at her own expense, 
for three successive years, 5,000 men ; so great was her 
endurance and her zeal against the common enemy. It 
was here that Putnam and Worcester took their lessoQS 
of exercise in the military art, and practiced their cour- 
age for a more serious and eventful struggle. 

This eventful struggle came ; finding no state readier 
to act a worthy and heroic part in it. As early as 
September, 1774, the false rumor of an outbreak in 
Boston had set the whole military force of the colonv 
in motion — a sign, before the time, of what was to l>e 
done when the time arrived. In April of 1775, before 
the battle of Lexington and before the Eevolution could 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 201 

be generally regarded as an ascertained fact, a circle of 
sagacious, patriotic men assembled in Hartford, per- 
ceiving the immense advantage that would accrue to the 
cause, from the capture and possession of the Northern 
fortresses that commanded Lake Champlain — Ticonder- 
oga and Crown Point — embarked in a scheme, to seize 
them, by a surprise of the British garrisons. They had 
a secret understanding with Grovernor Trumbull, and 
drew their funds from the public treasury, by a note 
under the joint signature of their names, eleven in num- 
ber. The enterprise was committed to Ethan Allen 
and Seth Warner, natives, one of Litchfield, and the 
other of Eoxbury, now residing in Vermont. A few 
men were sent on from Connecticut, forty or fifty more 
were collected in Berkshire county, in Massachusetts, 
and the remainder were enlisted in Vermont. The en- 
terprise was successful. More than two hundred can- 
non were captured — the same that were afterwards 
dragged across the mountains to Boston, and employed 
by Washington in the siege and final expulsion of Lord 
Howe. When the commander, of Ticonderoga, in- 
quired by what authority the surrender was demanded, 
Allen's reply was — ''Li the name of the Great Jehovah 
and the Continental Congress." That he had no au- 
thority from the Continental Congress, save what had 
come to him through the Great Jehovah, is certain- 
ly very clear; hence, I suppose, the form of his an- 
swer. 

It appears that Benedict Arnold of Norwich went on 
to Boston about this time and obtained a commission 



202 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

from the Committee of Safety there, authorizing him to 
conduct, in their behalf, a similar undertaking. But 
finding himself anticipated, when he reached Vermont, 
he was obliged to waive his right of command and took 
jiis place, as a volunteer, under Allen. Some of the 
Massachusetts historians, who have claimed the credit 
of this exploit, in behalf of their state, are clearly seen, 
therefore, to have trespassed on the honors of Connecti- 
cut. Connecticut projected and executed the move- 
ment. The treasury of Connecticut footed the bills. 
The prisoners were brought to Connecticut and quar- 
tered at AVest Hartford. 

The surrender of these fortresses took place on the 
10th of May. And before the capture was consum- 
mated, the news of the battles of Concord and Lexing- 
ton had arrived, showing that resistance to the mother 
country was openly begun. But the campaign was or- 
ganized and set on foot, it will be observed, long before 
these battles, and was, in fact, a volunteering, by the 
Connecticut leaders, of the state of war itself Mean- 
time, Putnam, waiting to catch the first note of out- 
break, left his plow in the furrow, when the news ar- 
rived, not remaining, it is even said, to unyoke his 
oxen, and flew to the field of action. The troops of 
the state poured after him, to be gathered under his 
command. The battle of Bunker Hill soon followed. 

It is remarkable that the question, who commanded 
m this very celebrated battle, has never yet been set- 
tled. The Massachusetts historians have generally 
maintained that Prescott was the commander; and 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 203 

some of them have even gone so far as not to recognize 
the presence of Putnam in it. The more candid and 
moderate have generally admitted his presence in the 
field and the valuable service rendered, by his inspirit- 
ing and heroic conduct. Prescott, they say, command- 
ed in the trenches, and Putnam was engaged outside of 
the trenches, in the open field and about the other hill 
by which the redoubt was overlooked or commanded ; 
doing what he could for the success of the day, but 
only in virtue of the commission he had from his own 
personal enthusiasm. As regards any chief command 
over the whole field of operations, they suppose there 
probably was none, alleging that the army was really 
not organized, and no scale of proper military prece- 
dence established. . 

As respects this latter point, which at first view 
might seem to be true, they are certainly in a mistake. 
For Putnam had been expressly ordered, by our Legis- 
lature, to put himself under the chief command of Mas- 
sachusetts ; as the conditions of the case evidently re- 
quired. He was serving, therefore, as an integral part 
of the military force of Massachusetts. Neither was he, 
or Prescott, or Ward the general-in-chief of the army, 
so raw in the practice of arms as not to know that, be- 
ing on the ground as a general of brigade, the scale of 
military precedence made him, ipso factOj principal in 
command over the colonel of a regiment. 

To the same conclusion we are brought, by a careful 
review of all the facts pertaining to the battle itself. 
There appears to be sufficient evidence that General 



204 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

Putnam, after liis successful encounter sometimes called 
the battle of Chelsea, which took place on the 27th of 
May previous, and by which he had produced some stir 
of sensation in the army, became more impatient of a 
state of inaction than ever, and proposed himself, in the 
council of war, that they should take up this advanced 
position on Bunker Hill. Prescott was in favor of the 
movement, but General Ward and others, including 
even Gen. Warren, a member of the Council of Safety, 
were opposed ; regarding the attempt as being too haz- 
ardous in itself, and one that would endanger the main 
position at Cambridge. Besides, what probably had 
quite as much influence, they distrusted the spirit of 
the troops, still raw in discipline; doubting whether 
they would come to the point of an open, pitched battle 
with the king and stand their ground. They had the 
same feeling that Washington had, when he enquired, 
after the battle — ^^ Could they stand fire?" and w^hen 
the answer was given, replied — 'Hhe cause is safe!" 
Putnam believed they would stand fire beforehand, 
urging the necessity of action to bring out the spirit 
that was in them and confirm it. Give them a good 
breastwork on the hill, he said, and they will hold it. 
*' They are not afraid of their heads, though very much 
afraid of their legs ; if you cover these they will fight 
forever." Warren, who was pacing the room, paused 
over a chair, and said, ''Almost thou persuadest me, 
Putnam. Still, I think the project rash ; but if joii 
undertake it, [^you,^ observe,] you will not be surprised 
to find me nt your side." Finally, ascertaining that 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 205 

Gen. Gage was about to seize and occupy the same 
ground, their hesitation was brought to an end. 

It was supposed, in the council, that ^^two thousand 
men" would be required to effect and maintain the 
proposed occupation. Accordingly we are to under- 
stand that, when only a thousand were detailed, under 
Col. Prescott, to occupy the hill and open the entrench- 
ments on the night of the 16th, it was expected that 
other troops were to be sent forward under a more gen- 
eral command, when they were wanted. And beyond 
a question this command was to be in Putnam, the 
chief mover of the enterprise. Accordingly we see 
that Putnam went over with the detachment under 
Prescott, and assisted in directing where the entrench- 
ment should be opened, viz., on the lower summit, or 
part of Bunker Hill, nearest to the city, afterwards 
called Breed's Hill; in the understanding that the 
higher eminence should be taken afterwards, when re- 
quired, and entrenchments opened there. Putnam re- 
turned that night, to Cambridge, and was back in the 
early dawn of the morning, as a responsible officer 
should be, to see the condition of the works. At ten 
o'clock he was in the field again. And as soon as it 
became evident that there was to be an assault upon 
the works, he ordered on the Connecticut troops, by 
the consent of General Ward, and was there, on the 
field, at the beginning of the engagement. Leaving 
Prescott, of course, to his position, which he had sim- 
ply to maintain, we see him beginning entrenchments 
on the other summit; directing the detachments to 

18 



206 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

their places; present everywhere rebuking and rally- 
ing the timid; watching every turn, rushing to every 
point of danger; seizing on a cannon, which it was 
said, could not be loaded, and even loading and firing 
it himself; maintaining thus, with desperate energy, 
the left wing which Lord Howe was constantly endeav- 
oring to carry, and the yielding of which would, at any 
moment, have ended the struggle of Prescott on the 
hill; saving also, by his firmness here, the retreat of 
Prescott from being only a slaughter or a capture ; last 
in the retreat himself, trying to rally for a stand upon 
the other hill, and onlv not endeavorino; to maintain 
the post in his own person ; then withdrawing and, of 
his own counsel, mounting Prospect Hill with the Con- 
necticut forces, opening his entrenchments there in the 
night, and holding it as a position between the enemy 
and Cambridge; a movement by which he probably 
saved the town and the public stores of the army ; for 
when the enemj^ saw his works there the next morning, 
they had no courage left to try a second day, against a 
position so admirably chosen — a position in which he 
was afterwards installed, by Washington, to maintain 
the honors of the center of the army. 

There was little reason, as we have seen, for Putnam 
to be multiplying orders to Prescott ; the only thing to 
be done was to enable Prescott, if possible, to hold his 
position. But it is in evidence that he did order away 
the entrenching tools, against the judgment of Prescott ; 
also that, when Warren came upon the ground, he went 
to Putnam, as the officer of direction, to ask vrhere he 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 207 

should go to serve as a volunteer, and that Putnam 
sent him to the redoubt, to the aid of Prescott ; also 
that the same order, in regard to firing, occasioned by 
the shortness of their ammunition, ^^as given every- 
where on the field, as well out of the redoubt as in it, 
and that Putnam said himself that he gave the order. 

It is very easy to see, regarding this statement of 
facts, how Prescott should often have been spoken of as 
being the chief in command in this battle, and even 
how he should have thought himself to be ; for he had 
the redoubt in charge at the beginning, and maintained 
the internal command of it. He came under a higher 
command, only by silent rules of military precedence, 
when other forces were upon the ground ; of which he 
w^ould hardly take note himself, so little was he inter- 
fered with. Putnam had work enough without, in the 
open field, and was very sure that Prescott would do 
his part within. It is only a little remarkable that Col. 
Prescott, when questioned by Mr. Adams, at Philadel- 
phia, in regard to the battle, does not even name Gen. 
Putnam, as having been upon the ground at all ; and 
apparently had not ascertained, two months after the 
battle, whether the Connecticut militia, sent out by 
himself, under Knowlton, to hold a position against the 
enemy's right, had obeyed his orders or had run away ! 
And it is even the more remarkable, that this bodv of 
men, assisted by the brave Capt. Chester of Wethers- 
field, and others whom Putnam was rallying to their 
support during the whole engagement, had been able, 
by raising an extempore breastwork of fence and new- 



208 HISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. 

mown grass, and defending it with Spartan fidelity, to 
save liim all the while from being flanked and cut to 
pieces ! For upon just this point Lord Howe was roll- 
ing his columns, with the greatest emphasis of assault, 
resting his main hope of success on turning the position 
so gallantly defended, and gaining, in this manner, the 
other summit of the hill, which, if he had been able to 
do, Prescott and his regiment would have been, from 
that moment, prisoners of war. In this view, it is a 
total mistake to look upon the defense of the redoubt, 
brilliant as it was and prominent to the eye, as the bat- 
tle of Bunker Hill. The place of extempore counsel 
and varying fortune, the hinge of the day, was really 
not there, but in the open field ; and especially in mov- 
ing, there, raw bodies of troops, with any such eftect as 
to maintain the critical point of the engagement. 

The testimony of authorities, in respect to the ques- 
tion of the chief command, you will understand, is vari- 
ous and contradictory, as it naturally would be. And 
yet the contradiction is rather verbal than real ; for as 
Prescott held the redoubt, in the manner described, it 
would be very natural, taking a more restricted view 
of the field, to speak of him as chief in command ; 
though the facts already recited, show most clearly, 
that Col. Swett gave the true testimony, when he said 
that Col. Prescott *^ was ordered to proceed to Charles- 
town, Gen. Putnam having the principal direction and 
superintendence of the expedition concerning it.'' This 
too was the testimony of Putnam himself, as the Eev. 
Josiah Whitnev testifies, in a note to the funeral ser- 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 209 

mon preaclied at Putuam's death. He says, ''The de- 
tachment was first put under the command of Gen. 
Putnam. With it he took possession of the hill, and 
ordered the battle from the beginning to the end." 
Does any one imagine that Gen. Putnam was a man to 
assert claims of honor that belonged to others? Far 
more likely was he, in the generosity of his nature, to 
give up such as were properly his own. 

The testimony of the old Courant, commenting on 
the battle, shortly after, corresponds. "In the list of 
heroes it is needless to expatiate on the character and 
bravery of Major Gen. Putnam, whose capacity to form 
and execute great designs, is known through Europe, 
and whose undaunted courage and martial abilities 
have raised him to an incredible height, in the esteem 
and friendship of his American brethren ; it is sufficient 
to say, that he seems to be inspired by God Almighty 
with a military genius." Col. Humphrey, writing his 
Life of Putnam, at Mount Vernon, under the eye of 
"Washington, and the historian Botta, who also derives 
his facts from original sources, agree in representing 
Putnam as the chief in command. 

Moreover, Washington, when he came upon the field 
only a few days after the battle, with commissions from 
the Congress appointing four Major Generals, immedi- 
ately delivered Putnam his commission, placing him 
second in command to himself, and reserved the three 
others for the further consideration of Congress ; though 
Putnam's commission, placing him above two very tal- 
ented of&cers of the state, superior in rank to himself, 

18- 



210 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

had created more complaint than either of the others. 
Why this remarkable deference to Putnam, unless he 
has been the chief actuating spirit in some great suc- 
cess? Why is this signal honor conferred on Gen. 
Putnam, when, if Col. Prescott commanded in the bat- 
tle, the eyes of the army and of the public at large are 
centered on him ? — who, I believe, was never afterwards 
promoted at all. 

I have seen, too, within a very few days, an original 
engraving of Gen. Putnam, published in England three 
months after the battle, which has at the foot these 
words, — "Major Gen. Putnam, of the Connecticut for- 
ces, and Commander in chief of the engagement on 
Buncker's Hill, near Boston. Published, as the Act 
directs, by C. Shepherd, 9th Sept., 1775." That he 
had the chief command here assigned him I firmly be- 
lieve ; which if he has lost, it has been at least three 
months subsequent to the battle ; and by means that 
often discolor the truth of history. No! the occupa- 
tion of the hill was emphatically Putnam's measure; 
one that truly represents the man. See him, as he is 
represented, in the council, the march, the beginning 
of the entrenchment, the fight itself; present every- 
where, directing, cheering on the men, rallying all the 
force he can to liecp the difficult point of the field ; last in 
the retreat, issuing grimmed with smoke and gunpow- 
der, and seizing, with his force, another hill, there to 
entrench again and wait the fortune of another day — do 
this, I say, and there is but one conclusion for us to re- 
ceive, viz., that Gen. Putnam was the chief in command, 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 211 

the animating spirit of the battle. This mnst be our 
claim and we must make it understood. If the monu- 
ment on Bunker Hill is a worthy testimony for Massa- 
chusetts, we must show that it testifies as much also 
for Connecticut ; and I hope our Connecticut eyes will 
be pardoned, if we see it tapering off into a top-stone, 
that represents the little town of Pomfret ! 

I have dwelt the more at length on this question, be- 
cause we seem to have lost our rights here, in a trans- 
action that in one view stands at the head of our 
American history ; and yet more because of the good it 
will do us to reclaim our rights. I suppose it may well 
enough be doubted whether Putnam was the ablest of 
all great commanders; whether, in fact, he was the 
general to head what would be called, in history, a 
great military campaign. He was a man of action, in- 
spiration, adventure, and he made men feel as he felt. 
"You seem to have the faculty. Sir," said Washington, 
"of infusing your own spirit." Nothing was more tru- 
ly distinctive of the man. His value lay in the im- 
mense volume of impulse or martial enthusiasm there 
was in him, and in the fact that his time was always 
novx The country wanted impulse to break silence, 
and he was the man, above all others in the colonies, to 
give that impulse. A more cautious man, probably, 
would not have advised to such an attempt ; possibly a 
wise man would not; but Putnam, whose impetuous 
soul had only a feeble connection with prudence, or 
with mere science, was the man to say, let us have the 
fight first, and settle the wisdom of it afterwards. Pos- 



212 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

sibly there is a higher kind of generalship ; but, 1 kno\r 
not how it is, when I see how much depended for oui 
country, at that time, on a real beginning of action, I 
am ready for once, to accept impulse as the truest coun- 
sel, and the fire of martial passion as being only the in- 
spired form of prudence. 

I can not rive you the details of our military transac- 
tions in the Ee volution. I can only name a few facts, 
that will suffice to indicate the spirit and devotion of 
our peojDle. Connecticut was the second state in the 
Union, as regards the amount of military force contrib- 
uted to the common cause. She had twenty-five regi- 
ments of militia and of these, it is said, that twenty-two 
full regiments were in actual ser\dce, out of the stat^, at 
one and the same time, and that the most busy and 
pressing season of the j'ear; leaving the women at 
home to hoe their fields and assist the bovs and old 
men in gathering the hai' vests. And such a class of 
material has seldom been gathered into an army. 
When Trumbull sent on fourteen regiments to Wash- 
ington, at Xew York, he described them as ''regiments 
of substantial farmers." And General Eoot, as a friend 
of mine remembers, declared that, in his brigade alone, 
there came out seven ministers, as captains of their own 
congregations. Among our leaders was Colonel Knowl- 
ton, than whom there was not a more gallant officer, or 
one more respected by the commander-in-chief in the 
arm}' of the Revolution. And when he fell, in the dis- 
astrous day at Harlaem, with so many hundreds of the 
sons of Connecticut, Washington evinced his affliction 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 213 

for the loss of this favorite ofl&cer, as being the loss 
most deplorable of all that befell the cause, on that los- 
ing da}^ Among the leaders, too, were Parsons, and 
Spencer, and Wooster, and Wolcott, and Ledyard, and, 
last of all, but not least worthy to be named, though to 
name him should never be necessary before a Connecti- 
cut audience, that mournful flower of patriotism, the 
young scholar of Coventry; he whom no service could' 
daunt that Washington desired, and who, when he was 
called to die an ignominious death, nobly said to his 
enemies and executioners, that ^^his only regret was, 
that he had but one life to give for his country." 

But I must not omit to speak of our venerable Gov- / 
ernor, the patriotic Trumbull, under whom we acted 
our part in this eventful struggle. He was one of those 
patient, true-minded men, that hold an even hand of 
authority in stormy times, and suffer nothing to fall out 
of place, either by excess or defect of service ; to whom 
Washington could say, ^^I can not sufficiently express 
my thanks, not only for your constant and ready com- 
pliance with every request of mine, but for your pru- 
dent forecast, in ordering matters, so that your force 
has been collected and put in motion as soon as it has 
been demanded." And yet there like to have been a 
fatal breach between them, at the beginning of the war. 
The British ships in the Sound were threatening to land 
on our coast, and Trumbull requested that a part of the 
troops he was raising might remain to guard our own 
soil. No request, apparently, could be more reasona- 
ble. Washington refused and ordered them all to 



214 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

Boston. Trumbull wrote him a most pungev.c letter; 
adding, however, like a true patriot, who sees che ne- 
cessity of subordination to all power and effect, that he 
will comply; ''for it is plain that such jealousies in- 
dulged, however just, will destroy the cause." Noble 
answer ! worth}^ to be recorded, as a rebuke to faction, 
as long as the republic lasts ! Washington immediate- 
ly explained, the misunderstanding was healed, and 
from that time forth he leaned upon Trumbull as one 
of his chief supports ; confident always of this, that he 
could calculate on marching the whole state bodily just 
where he pleased. 

Neither let us forget, in this connection, what ap- 
pears to be sufficiently authenticated, that our Trum- 
bull is no other than the world-renowned Brother Jon- 
athan, accepted as the soubriquet of the United States 
of America. Our Connecticut Jonathan was to Wash- 
ington what the scripture Jonathan was to David, a 
true friend, a counselor and stay of confidence — Wash- 
ington's brother. When he wanted honest counsel and 
w^ise, he would say, ''let us consult brother Jonathan ;" 
and then afterwards, partly from habit and. partly in 
playfulness of phrase, he would say the same when re- 
ferring any matter to the Congress, — "let us consult 
Brother Jonathan." And so it fell out rightly, that as 
Washington was called the Father of his Country, so 
he named the fine boy, the nation, after his brother 
Jonathan — a good, solid, scripture name, which, as our 
sons and daughters of the coming time may speak it, 
anywhere between the two oceans, let them remember 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 215 

honest old Connecticut and the faithful and true brother 
she gave to Washington ! 

Considering the very intimate historic connection of 
our Eevolution with the influence of the clergy, theii 
active instigation to it and their constant, powerful co- 
operation in it, the transition we make in passing from 
our military history to that of the pulpit is by no 
means violent. Only in speaking of our great men 
here and our theologic standing generally, I must 
speak in the briefest manner. No mean distinction is 
it to say, that the renowned theologian, preacher and 
philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, was a native of Con- 
necticut, and a graduate of Yale College. And though 
the more active part of his life was spent in Massachu- 
setts, he retained his afl&nities, more especially, with 
the churches and ministers of Connecticut. I need not 
say, that there is no American name of higher repute, 
not onl}^ among the divines, but also among the meta- 
physicians both of this country and of Europe. Dr. 
Dwight was born in Massachusetts but educated here, 
and here was the scene of his life. Besides these, hav- 
ing our Hooker, and Davenport, and Bellamy, and 
Smalley, and by a less exclusive property, our Hop- 
kins, and Emmons, and Griffin, all sons of Connecticut, 
we have abundant reason, I think, to be satisfied with 
our high eminence in the department of theological lit- 
erature and pulpit effect. 

As regards our poets I will only detain you to say 



216 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

that, while I am far from thinkmg that everything 
which beats time in verse is poetry, it is yet something 
that we have our Trumbull, and Hillhouse, and Brain- 
ard, and Percival, and Pierpont, and Halleck, who, not 
to speak of others closer to our acquaintance, have 
written what can never perish, while wit may enliven 
men's hearts, or music and the sense of beauty remain.. 

Including, next, in our inventory, mechanical inven- 
tions, I may say that the great improvements in cotton 
machinery, by Gilbert Brewster, justify the title some- 
times given him of the Arkwright of our country. 

The cotton gin of Whitney is a machine that, by it- 
self, has doubled the productive power, and so the val- 
ue, of the Southern half of our countrv. If the invent- 
or had been paid for his invention, and not defrauded 
of his rights by a conspiracy too strong for the laws, 
the interest of his money would redeem all the fugi- 
tives that cross the line of free labor, as long as there is 
such a line to cross. 

The first two printing presses patented in the United 
States were from Hartford. 

John Fitch of Connecticut has the distinguished hon- 
or of producing the first steamboat that ever moved 
upon the waters of the world. He was unfortunate in 
his character, though a man of genius and high enthu- 
siasm. Failing of the means necessary to complete his 
experiments, and universally derided by the public, he 
persisted in the confidence that steam was to be the 
great agent of river navigation in the world, and gave 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 217 

it, as a last request, that "his body might be buried on the 
banks of the Ohio, where his rest would be soothed by 
the blowing of the steam and the splash of the waters." 
It is not as generally known, I believe, that the first 
steam locomotive, ever constructed, was run in the 
streets of Hartford. The inventor was Doctor Kinsley, 
a man whose history was strikingly similar to that of 
Fitch. The late Theodore Dwight, known to many in 
this audience, lent him the money with w^hich he made 
his experiments. He succeeded in part, but fell through 
into bankruptcy, at the end, still persisting that steam 
was to be the agent of the land travel of the world. 
His experiments were made between the years '97 and 
'9, previous to the introduction of rails as the guides 
and supports of motion. 

It now remains to speak of the rank we have held, 
in the matter of education, and the power we have ex- 
erted by that means, in the republic. It is remarkable 
that a very large share of the colleges in our nation 
draw their lineage, not from Harvard, most distinguish- 
ed in the fruits of elegant literature, but from Yale. 
This is true of Dartmouth, Princeton, Williams, Mid- 
dlebur^, Hamilton, "Western Eeserve, Jacksonville, and 
Athens University in Georgia. These institutions were 
some of them planned in Connecticut, others of them 
moved, or in some principal degree manned, by the 
graduates of Yale College and sons of Connecticut. 
Dr. Johnson of Stratford, a graduate of Yale and after- 
wards of Oxford, was the principal originator and first 

19 



218 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

President also of Columbia College, Xew York. I find 
in tlie office of our Secretary of State a petition to our 
Legislature from the Trustees of Princeton College, ask- 
ing leave to draw a lottery here for the benefit of their 
institution, such leave being denied them by their own 
state. They aver in their petition, that '^ it would be a 
happy means of establishing and perpetuating a desira- 
ble harmony between the two institutions, Yale and 
Princeton, which it will be the care of your petitioners 
to promote and preserve." Leave was granted ; for it 
was the manner of our state to seize every opportunity, 
in every place, for the assistance of learning. I may 
also add, that Mr. Crary, to whose active exertions in 
behalf of education the school system and the State 
University of Michigan are mainly due, is a son of 
Connecticut and a graduate of Trinity College. 

Our system of common schools, originated by a pub- 
lic statute which is one of the very first statutes passed 
by the colonial Legislature, and faithfully maintained 
down to within the past twenty years, was, till then, 
acknowledged to be far in advance of that of any other 
state. The founding of our school fund, too, is an act 
that used to be regarded and spoken of with admiration 
everywhere, as characteristic of the state. 

And now, if you will see what force there is in edu- 
cation, what precedence it gives and preponderance of 
weight, even to a small and otherwise insignificant 
state, you have only to see what Connecticut has effect- 
ed through the medium of her older college and her 
once comparatively vigorous system of common schools. 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 219 

I have spoken of the numerous colleges dotting the 
map of the republic, which are seen to be more or less 
directly off-shoots of Yale. If you ask what parts of 
the republic were settled principally by emigrations 
from Connecticut, they are the Eastern part of Long- 
Island, the Northern half of New Jersey, the Western 
sections of Massachusetts and Vermont, Middle and 
Western New York, the Susquehanna valley in Penn- 
sylvania, and the Western Eeserve territory in Ohio — 
just those portions of our country, more recently set- 
tled, as you will perceive, that are most distinguished 
for industry, thrift, intelligence, good morals and char- 
acter. 

Again, if you enter into the legislative bodies of 
other states west of us, and ask who are the members, 
you will find the sons of Connecticut among them, in a 
large proportion of numbers compared with those of 
any other state. In the convention, for example, that 
revised the Constitution of New York in 1821, it was 
found that, out of -one hundred and twenty -six mem- 
bers, thirty-two were natives of Connecticut, not in- 
cluding those who were born of a Connecticut par- 
entage in that state. Of the sons of Massachusetts 
which, according to the ratio of population, ought to 
have had about seventy, there w^ere only nine. If you 
add to the thirty-two natives of Connecticut, in that 
body, her descendants born in New York, and those who 
came in through Vermont, New Jersey, and other 
states, it is altogether probable that they would be 
found to compose a majority of the body; presenting 



220 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

the very interesting fact that Connecticut is found sit 
ting there, to make a Constitution for the great state of 
Xew York. I found, on inquiry, four or five winters 
ago, that the Xew York Legislature contained fifteen 
natives of Connecticut, while of Massachusetts there 
were only nine ; though, according to her ratio of num- 
bers, there should have been about forty. So also in 
the Ohio Legislature of 1838-9, there were found in the 
lower house of seventy-four members, twelve from 
Connecticut, two from Massachusetts, two from Ver- 
mont. 

If we repair to the Halls of the American Congress, 
we shall there discover what Connecticut is doing on a 
still larger scale of comparison. The late Hon. James 
Hillhouse, when he was in -Congress, ascertained that 
forty-seven of the members, or about one-fifth of the 
whole number in both Houses, were native born sons 
of Connecticut. Mr. Calhoun assured one of our Eep- 
resentatives, when upon the floor of the House with 
him, that he had seen the time when the natives of 
Connecticut, together with all the graduates of Yale 
College there collected, wanted only five of being a ma- 
jority of that body. I took some pains in the winter, 
I think, of '43, to ascertain how the composition of the 
Congress stood at that time. There could not, of 
course, be as many native citizens of Connecticut 
among the members, as in the days of Mr. Hillhouse ; 
but including native citizens and descendants born out 
of the state, I found exactly his number, forty-seven. 
Of the New York representation, sixteen, or two fifths, 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 221 

were sons or descendantSj in the male line, of Connec- 
ticut. 

Saying nothing of descendants born out of the state, 
there were, at that time, eighteen native born sons of 
Connecticut in the Congress. According to the Blue 
Book, Massachusetts had seventeen ; when taken in the 
proportion of numbers she should have had forty-two. 
New Hampshire should have had eighteen also, but 
had only seven ; Vermont eighteen, but had only four ; 
Louisiana eighteen, but had only two; New Jersey 
twenty-one, but had only nine. I see no way to ac- 
count for these facts, especially when the comparison is 
taken between Connecticut and Massachusetts, unless it 
be that, prior to a time quite recent, our school system 
was farther advanced and the education imparted to 
our youth more universal and more perfect. 

How beautiful is the attitude of our little state, when 
seen through the medium of facts like these. Unable 
to carry weight b}^ numbers, she is seen marching out 
her sons to conquer other posts of influence and repre- 
sent her honor in other fields of action. AVhich, if she 
continues to do, if she takes the past simply as a begin- 
ning, and returns to that beginning with a fixed de- 
termination to make it simply the germ of a higher and 
more perfect culture, there need scarcely be a limit to 
the power she may exert, as a member of the republic. 
The smallness of our territory is an advantage even, as 
regards the highest form of social development and the 
most abundant fruits of genius. Our state, imder a 
skillful and sufficient agriculture, witb a proper im- 

19^ 



222 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE 

provement of our waterfalls, is capable of sustaining a 
million of people, in a condition of competence and 
social ornament ; and that is a number as large as any 
state government can manage witli the highest effect. 
No part of our country between the two oceans is sus- 
ceptible of greater external beauty. What now looks 
rough and forbidding in our jagged hill-sides and our 
raw beginnings of culture, will be softened, in the fu- 
ture landscape, to an ornamental rock-work, skirted by 
fertility, pressing out in the cheeks of the green dells 
where the farm-houses are nested, bursting up through 
the waving slopes of the meadows, and walling the 
horizon about with wooded hills of rock and pastured 
summits. We have pure, transparent waters, a clear, 
bell-toned atmosphere, and, withal, a robust, healthy- 
minded stock of people, uncorrupted by luxury, un- 
humiliated by superstition, sharpened by good necessi- 
ties, industrious in their habits, simple in their manners 
and tastes, rigid in their morals and principles ; com- 
bining, in short, all the higher possibilities of character 
and genius, in a degree that will seldom be exceeded in 
any people of the world. These are the mines, the 
golden placers of Connecticut. Turning now to these 
as our principal hope for the future, let us endeavor, 
with a fixed and resolute concentration of our public 
aim, to keep the creative school-house in action, and 
raise our institutions of learning to the highest pitch of 
excellence. 

I am far from thinking that our schools have ever 
been as low, or riiefficient, as many have su]3posed ; the 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 223 

facts I have recited clearly show the contrary. And 
yet they certainly are not worthy of our high advan- 
tages, or the age of improvement in which we live. 
Therefore I rejoice that our lethargy is now finally 
broken, and that we are fairly embarked in an organ- 
ized plan for the raising of our schools to a pitch of cul- 
ture and perfection, worthy of our former precedence. 

To exhibit the kind of expectation we are to set be- 
fore Connecticut as a state, let me give you the picture 
of a little obscure parish in Litchfield county; and I 
hope you will pardon me if I do it, as I must, with a 
degree of personal satisfaction ; for it is not any very 
bad vice in a son to be satisfied with his parentage. 
This little parish is made up of the corners of three 
towns, and the ragged ends and corners of twice as 
many mountains and stony-sided hills. But this rough, 
wild region, bears a race, of healthy-minded, healthy- 
bodied, industrious and religious people. They love to 
educate their sons and God gives them their reward. 
Out of this little, obscure nook among the mountains, 
have come forth two presidents of colleges, the two that 
a few years ago presided, at the same time, over the 
two institutions, Yale and Washington. Besides these 
they have furnished a Secretary of State for the com- 
monwealth, during a quarter of a century or more. 
Also a Solicitor, commonly known as the Cato of the 
United States treasui:y. Also a member of Congress. 
Also a distinguished professor. And besides these a 
greater number of lawyers, physicians, preachers and 
teachers, both male and female, than I am now able to 



22-i HISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. 

enumerate. Probably some of you have never so much 
as heard the name of this little bye-place on the map of 
Connecticut, generally it is not on the maps at all, but 
how manv cities are there of 20,000 inhabitants in our 
country, that have not exerted one-half the influence on 
mankind. The power of this little parish, it is not too 
much to say, is felt in every part of our. great nation. 
Eecognized, of course, it is not ; but still it is felt. 

This, now, is the kind of power in which Connecticut 
is to have her name and greatness. This, in small, is 
what Connecticut should be. She is to find her first 
and noblest interest, apart from religion, in the full and 
perfect education of her sons and daughters. And so 
she is to be sending out her youth, empowered in ca- 
pacity and fortified by virtue, to take their posts of 
honor and influence in the other states ; in her behalf 
to be their physicians and ministers of religion, their 
professors and laAvyers, their wise senators, their great 
orators and incorruptible judges, bulwarks of virtue, 
truth and order to the republic, in all coming time. 
And then, when the vast area of our country between 
the two oceans is filled with a teeming population, 
when the delegates of sixty or a hundred states, from 
the granite shores of the East, and the alluvial plains 
of the South, and the srolden mountains of the West, 
are assembled in the Halls of our Congress, and little 
Connecticut is there represented, in her own behalf, by 
her one delegate, it will still and always be found that 
she is numerously represented also by her sons from 
other states, and her one delegate shall be himself re 



HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 225 

garded, in his person, as the symbol of that true 
Brother Jonathan, whose name still designates the 
great republic of the world. 

Meantime, if any son of Connecticut will indulge in 
the degraded sneer, by which ignorant and malicious 
custom has learned to insult her name, let him be 
looked upon as the man who is able to please himself 
in defiling the ashes of his mother. Let me testify my 
hearty joy too, in the presence of this assembly, that a 
citizen of Connecticut has at last been heard in the 
Senate of this great nation, doing honor to its noble 
history, by a fit chastisement of the insult, which a vol- 
unteer malice, emboldened by former impunity, was 
tempted again to offer to our commonwealth. 

Fellow-citizens, I have endeavored, this evening, to 
show you Connecticut — what she has been, and so what 
she is and ought to be. I undertook this subject, 
simply because of the chilling and depressing influence 
I have so often experienced from the want of any suf- 
ficient public feeling in our state. I am not a historian, 
and I may have fallen into some mistakes, which a 
critic in American history will detect. I knew but im- 
perfectly, when I began, how great a wealth of char- 
acter and incident our history contains. I supposed it 
might be more defective than I could wish, as regards 
the kind of material most fitted to inspire a public en- 
thusiasm. But, as I proceeded patiently in my ques- 
tions, gathering, stage by stage, this inventor}^, which 
I have condensed even to dryness, I began to be morti- 
fied by the discovery that the age of Connecticut his- 



226 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 

tory most defective and least worthy of respect is the 
present— that we are most to be honored in that which 
we have forgot, and least because we have forgotten it. 
Such, I sa}^, is Connecticut! There is no outburst 
of splendor in her history, no glaring or obtrusive 
prominence to attract the applause of the multitude. 
Her true merit and position are discovered only by 
search, she is seen only through the sacred veil of mod- 
esty — great, only, in the silent energy of worth and be- 
neficence. But when she is brought forth out of her 
retirement, instead of the little, declining, undistin- 
guished, scarcely distinguishable State of Connecticut, 
jon behold, rising to view, a history of practical great- 
ness and true honor; illustrious in its beginning; se- 
rious and faithful in its progress; dispensing intelli- 
gence, without the rewards of fame; heroic for the 
right, instigated by no hope of applause ; independent, 
as not knowing how to be otherwise; adorned with 
names of wisdom and greatness, fit to be revered as 
long as true excellence may have a place in the rever- 
ence of mankind. 



VI. 

AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST.* 



Gentlemen of the Society: 

You have thrown it upon me, at a late hour, to pre- 
pare your Annual Address. Exhausted in strength 
and spirits, by the pressure of manifold duties, and de- 
siring rather to be eased of my burdens, than to suffer 
the accumulation of new ones, I should scarcely have 
listened to your call, had it not suggested early scenes, 
which it is a kind of recreation to remember. It re- 
minded me of the country and the simple life of the 
j&elds, the plow and the team, the digging of rocks and 
the piling of stone walls, the green thickets of maize 
and the scented hay, the sounding flail of winter and 
the ringing of the ax in the frosty woods, — days of vic- 
toriou-s health, sound digestion, peaceful sleep, and 
youthful spirits buoyant as the wing of the bird and 
fresh as their morning song. Thus I was tempted to 
look upon the preparation of your Address as a kind 
of excursion into the country. In which hope, if I am 
disappointed, I shall, at least, have endeavored to 

^' Delivered as an Address before the Hartford County Agricultural So- 
ciety, Oct. 2, 1846. 



228 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

repay, in what manner I was able, some of the pleasant 
obligations I owe to the country ; the lessons of cheer- 
ful industry there received; the sense there acquired, 
amid the small detail of rural economy, of what it is to 
live^* the acquaintance made with nature, by a thor- 
ough contact with her in all her moods and objects; 
and, more than all, the worth of enjoyments that spring 
from the ingenuous performance of life's simple duties. 

I shall not undertake, on the present occasion, to in- 
struct you, either in the science or in the practical 
methods of agriculture. I rather jorefer to occupy you 
with a subject which is more within my compass — a 
more general subject, though one that is intimately 
connected with our agricultural prosperity, and one 
which, through that, deeply concerns the common in- 
terest of us all. 

The agriculture of our State, though improving, is 
still very crude and imperfect. An impression prevails 
among us that agriculture can not here become a hope- 
ful and profitable interest. Land is thought to be dear^ 
in proportion to its value ; the soil is much of it poor 
and untractable ; and the sky is harsh and repulsive. 
Hence our young men, together with many enterpiising 
families in middle life, are tempted to relinquish the 
ties that bind them here and go out to seek their for- 
tune in the new world of the west. To stay here and 
delve among the snows and rocks and worn-out, sour, 
old fields of Connecticut, is supposed to indicate a de- 
gree of verdancy, or, at least, a want of manly determ- 
ination, not altogether worthy of respect. Accordingly, 



AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 229 

we find tliat our population scarcely increases, and the 
census roll of 1840 shows that, in some parts of the 
State, it has even begun to diminish. The tone of 
public spirit droops accordingly, the prices of property 
are depressed, and all the substantial interests of society 
are held in check. We seem even to have it in ques- 
tion in our hearts, whether, at some future day, when 
the Paradise of the west is beginning to be set in order, 
the people of old Connecticut will not adjourn bodily 
and go clear, leaving its bleak hills and flinty fields to 
themselves. 

In what I may say on this subject, I wish not to be 
understood as desiring utterly to stop the emigration of 
our people. If they are a loss to us, they are yet a gain 
to other parts of our great nation, which needs them 
quite as much as we. In just this way has our State 
already bestowed upon the rising States of the west 
some of the best blessings they have received — men of 
industry, order, education and piety, who have assisted 
in laying the foundations of all that is good and hopeful 
in their newlv constructed institutions. We can not 
regret these, our kindred, as lost ; they are our pride 
rather, and we hope that others of our sons and daugh- 
ters will go forth to do us honor in the same way. At 
the same time, it is my earnest conviction that the west- 
ward tendency of our population is extravagant, so ex- 
travagant as even to amount to a serious delusion. 
There are commonly no such advantages to be gained 
by removal as are anticipated. Meantime we are pre- 
vented, by the same delusion, from realizing here that 

20 



230 AGRICULTURE AT. THE EAST. 

spectacle of social beauty and maturity which is needed, 
above all things, to serve as an ideal to the nation at 
large, and thus as a stimulant to its moral and physical 
advancement. 

What I propose, therefore, is to enter into the ques- 
tion of agriculture as a New England interest. My 
conviction is, and I hope to produce the same in you, 
that in ordinary cases you may much better stay here 
and retain your families about you, multiplying your 
farms in number as the hands and mouths are multi- 
plied, reducing them in size as ihej are multiplied in 
number, and enriching their qualit}^ as they are di- 
minished in size. In other words, emigration to the 
west, as it now prevails, is bad economy. You will 
incur greater hardships, enjoy fewer comforts, and ad- 
vance in property with more difficulty and greater un- 
certainty there than here. 

In presenting the merits of this question, something 
requires to be said concerning the comparative natural 
advantages of agriculture here and at the west, those 
especially which belong to the climate and the soil. 

Our climate is more sharp and rugged, but not less 
healthy, and health is the first article of physical pros- 
perity, as well as of physical enjoyment. If our 
changes are abrupt, if our extremes of heat and cold 
are severe, our air is pure and vigorous beyond that of 
almost any other country in the world. A softer cli- 
mate, too, makes softer men, men of a lower physical 
tone and a less triumphant energy. So a moister cli- 
mate, like that of England, makes a rounder and more 



AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 231 

full-blooded race, but fullness of moisture and a fair 
skin are no signs of muscular spring, and clear, elastic, 
temperament. A New England farmer, swinging his 
scythe under a July sun, and foddering bis cattle on a 
snow-bank, has a good climate enough for him, because 
he has a body and mind that are tough enough for all 
weather. What matter is it to him how the thermom- 
eter ranges, when he has a spring thermometer in his 
body, which tempers all extremes and keeps up the 
equilibrium of his physical enjoyment. He belongs to 
a fire-king, snow-king race, and brought up in fire and 
snow, he is at home in both elements, happy in the 
royal vigor of his bodily prerogative. Some, I know, 
are falling into the habit of railing at our sour and 
changeful climate.. But from what I have seen of the 
temperament of milder countries and the milder vigor 
of their people, I have come to the conclusion that we 
have about the most respectable climate in the world. 
It is true that we all die, and some are ready to con- 
clude that, as one disease or another is certainly de- 
termined to kill us and will not let us be excused, that 
there must be some intolerable fault in the climate. 
Whereas, if they are willing to look at reasonable evi- 
dence, there is no part of the world where the people 
appear to have such a spring of elasticity, such capacity 
of endurance, such power of execution, and live, on the 
average, to so great an age. If any person or family 
has reason to dread the development of hereditary con- 
sumption, they may find their advantage, perhaps, in 
emigrating to the western States. Otherwise, they are 



232 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

far more likely to prolong their days, retain their health 
unshaken, and multiply their physical enjoyments, by 
remaining in New England. 

The soil of the west is certainly richer, more feasible 
and more fruitful, naturally, than ours. But this ad- 
vantage, which I freely admit, is offset by three or four 
others, which more than counterbalance it in the reck- 
oning. Our country abounds in rapid streams and 
waterfalls, and is therefore destined by nature to be a 
great manufacturing region — greater even than we, as 
yet, begin to conceive. It will be more populous than 
any purely agricultural region can be. It will abound 
in large towns and cities, preparing markets for those 
kinds of produce which can not be transported over 
long distances, copious enough to consume all that our 
soil will yield, — apples and all kinds of fruits, pota^es 
and other esculent roots, veal, lamb, poultry, and fresh 
meat generally, milk, butter, eggs, hay, wood, — in all 
such articles we shall have a market close at hand, and 
have it to ourselves, clear of competition. Our country, 
too, is on the sea-board, and must, therefore, be the 
market country of the nation, as long as it exists. For 
about half the year, too, the vast inland regions of the 
west are very much excluded from this market. Mean- 
time we, always near at hand, can watch the fluctua- 
tions of the market and turn in our products, at short 
notice, so as to take advantage of prices. Doubtless it 
sounds very imposingly to us, when we learn that a 
friend in Illinois has raised so man}^ bushels of wheat 
to the acre, and has had a hundred or five hundred 



i 



AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 233 

acres in cultivation ; but when it is added that he sold 
it for fifty or eighty cents per bushel, carting it off a 
hundred or a hundred and fifty miles, to some lake or 
river, at an expense of twenty -five cents a bushel ; re- 
alizing, in clear profit, even less than a quarter of the 
income, per acre, which he would have realized here, 
on land only moderately productive, the fascination 
seems a little diminished. Then you understand why 
he continues to live in a log-house, writes few letters, 
postpones the visit to his friends which he long ago 
spoke of, and why, if you visit him, which is more 
likely, he looks rougher than he used to look, has a 
want of service in the house, and a half wild race of 
children round him waiting to be educated. 

To offset the productiveness of the soil at the west, 
we have, too, another advantage, which no considerate 
man will despise. I mean pure water — a plentiful sup- 
ply, on almost every ten acres of ground, of good pure 
water. So many limpid brooks thread our valleys, so 
many crystal springs break out of our hills, a well of 
moderate depth commands a fountain so clear and 
abundant, that we scarcely think of water, as a thing 
of any value, least of all, as a necessary convenience to 
agriculture. But you remove to the west and the first 
thing you discover, probably, is, that you are to spend 
your life in taking medicine. The rich fields on which 
you locate, and out of which your waving harvests are 
to grow, are probably underlaid with lime juice. You 
sink a well some twenty or sixty feet, and the bucket, 
dipping into this liquid medicine, draws it up to be the 

20- 



234 AGPwICUJ.TURE AT THE EAST. 

drink of jour days. Your tea and coflfee are steeped in 
medicine. Your face and clotlies are washed in the 
same. And when you die, it will probably be a fair 
verdict that you died of taking medicine. Then having 
probably no streams or springs in your fields, which are 
not dvj in the summer, you must sink another well and 
set up a pump for your cattle. If you are sick or leave 
home, and trust them in the charge of a careless boy, or 
a faithless man, they are likely to be lowing in dismal 
agony for your return. So if you are unexpectedly de- 
tained from home yourself. And as a part of your or- 
dinary labor, you must drive your cattle, at least twice 
in the day, to the watering-place, and spend a full hour 
in pumping for them a hogshead of the medicinal liquid 
just described; having it for your comfort that when 
the poor herd look up from the trough at which they 
drink, they will seem to have it in their faces to tell 
you how much better it is to be in a land of rocks and 
snow-banks, than to dwell in a thirsty land where no 
water is. Meantime if, in the dry season of summer 
and autumn, you descend to the lower grounds that 
skirt the sluggish streams, which, we suppose, you will 
have had the discretion to avoid in fixing j'our location, 
there you come upon a stagnant, inky-looking ditch, 
winding round among the decayed trees and piles of 
drift-wood, no ripple of motion stirring the surface, no 
sign of life appearing to disturb the dismal, deathlike 
silence of the pool. The very frogs have gone ashore 
and sit drooping among the reeds, afraid to leap into 
the poisonous element, and the fishes lie sick below. 



AGRICULTUKE AT THE EAST. 235 

The most decisive sign of life you discover thereabouts 
is in the ague shake of the men, women and children, 
who have dared to pitch upon the rich bottoms adja- 
cent, and whose harvest, you perceive, is rotting down 
in their fields unreaped. 

We have also another compensation for the deficient 
richness and the intractable stubbornness of our soil, in 
the superior beauty of which it is capable. Nor to any 
thoughtful, cultivated man is this a mean advantage. 
The western country, though fertile as a garden by na- 
ture, and capable of excelling, perhaps, in productive- 
ness, any other portion of the world's surface, is yet, for 
the most part, a dull, monotonous region, and never can 
be otherwise. No possible ornament or cultivation can 
ever give it a picturesque effect. Without hills and 
waterfalls, without foaming streams, rocks, green dells 
and sheltered valleys, art can never supply the defi- 
ciency of nature. Traveling through a cleared region 
of miles in extent, you can see nothing but a rampart 
of forest trees, which close you in and forbid you to see 
farther. No mountain ranges lift their blue heads, 
marking a distant horizon round you. Indeed you 
are continually haunted by the feeling that there is 
no horizon, that it has sunk, gone down with the 
sun, some thousands of years ago, never to rise. In 
the vast prairie regions, where no woods impede the 
view, the case is even worse. There being no elevated 
objects or summits to impart, by changes of color, a 
sense of distances, there are no distances, and the sky 
shuts down about you so close that you suspend your 



236 AGRICULTUKE AT THE EAST. 

breath instinctively, as one thinking of suffocation. 
And thus, instead of the Great Valley, of which you 
heard so much, and which you fancied would spread 
its ample bosom round you, vast and magnificent be- 
yond the compass of all thought, you find that jou are, 
in fact, living under a bowl of sky scarcely bigger than 
your farm. Such is not New England. We have 
here a country of varied outline, composed of brooks, 
lakes, cliffs of rock, green dells bosomed among the 
hills and girt about by distant mountains, a country 
naturally wild and rough, but capable of the highest 
physical beauty. And this beauty it will one day re- 
veal. I have not one doubt that the present feeling of 
the nation, that which is now turning all eyes west- 
ward, is, before many generations have passed away, to 
be wholly reversed. The great west, which is now the 
Paradise of cheap land, will be known as a Paradise no 
longer, but rather as the great American corn-field, the 
Poland of the United States. New England, mean- 
time, will be sprinkled over with beautiful seats and 
bloom as a cultivated garden. The wooded hills, the 
rocky cliffs, the green slopes and waterfalls, will be 
wrought into a picture of grace and -loveliness; the 
longing heart of the nation will be turning hither, and 
men of resources and cultivated tastes will be pressing 
eastward to seek a residence of comfort and ornament. 
In short, there is not the smallest room to doubt that, 
taken in the long run of time. New England will be 
found, in its simple cajoacity of physical beauty, to be 



AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 237 

far more richly gifted by nature than the richest re- 
gions of fertile monotony in the west. 

I have spoken, thus far, simply of the general natural 
advantages of our country, as regards agriculture, com- 
pared with the new countries west of us. On which 
side the balance lies I see no room to doubt. But gen- 
eral considerations of this nature, though entitled to 
great weight, are not decisive in themselves. Still, it 
will be said, that agriculture is not here a profitable in- 
terest, and that, with every man seeking a livelihood, is 
the first thing. But I am always curious to know who 
it is, what kind of farmer, on what kind of farm, hj 
what kind of cultivation, that has ascertained the un- 
profitableness of agriculture here. It makes all the dif- 
ference possible who it is that has ascertained such a 
fact. For it may be, after all, that it is the unprofita- 
bleness of the man that is proved, not the unprofitable- 
ness of agriculture. And if I mistake not, there are 
unprofitable men at the west as well as here. The 
probability is, moreover, that an unprofitable man, 
crossing the mountains, will be able also to prove, both 
there and everywhere, that agriculture is not a profita- 
ble interest. 

However there is a current impression or opinion 
that agriculture, in New England, is not and can not be 
profitable. And some respect is due to current opin- 
ions, though there are many such, that are mere saws 
of the day, and worth about as much as the new saws 
that prevail, every successive year, in regard to medi- 
cine. Our farmers scour over three or four times the 



238 AGRICULTUKE AT THE EAST. 

amount of surface which they are really able to culti- 
vate, wearing down land, teams, bones and patience, to 
get a bare subsistence, and then declare, with a sigh, 
that agricultut*e here is not profitable ; they must sell 
and go to the west. Then springs up a dilettante, or 
gentleman farmer, who declares that it is not so, as he 
will shortly prove. He buys a small farm, for he has 
some right notions, and proceeds to bring it under cul- 
tivation, on scientific principles. He gives orders to the 
men to make heaps of compost, that will cost him, be- 
fore he gets through, at least five dollars a load ; lays 
in a stock of patent utensils ; plants orchards that are 
certainly to pay all his expenses in five years; pur- 
chases a herd of cows that are each to give half a barrel 
of milk a day; sheep that will yield a fleece of ten 
pounds every year, besides being mutton themselves, 
and a choice breed of swine that will almost fatten 
themselves on their own reputation, and thus he begins. 
Then he comes out of his scientific library, in his 
gloves, to see how the men get on, and how the old 
worn-out farm rejoices under his new scientific dispen- 
sation. Or perhaps he is a professional man, and only 
goes out occasionally to observe the working of his ex- 
periment. By and by he begins to think that his bills 
come in too fast, much faster than his money. He goes 
into a reckoning, and finds, to his great surprise, that 
his farm has cost him about a thousand dollars a year. 
Now he also concludes that agriculture in New England 
is certainly an unprofitable business, and the fact is 
proved. The old style farmer thought so; the new 



AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 239 

style farmer has made it certain. Henceforth it is an 
established fact. 

Now I have the greatest respect for science. There 
is no doubt that it has added very great assistance ' to 
agriculture already, and will, in future times, add a 
great deal more than it has done. Still it can do 
nothing, separated from practical economy, personal in- 
dustry, inspection and experience. Botany, by itself, 
will not raise potatoes ; vegetable physiology will not 
keep them from rotting after they are raised ; a knowl- 
edge of manures will not enrich a farm ; a knowledge 
of soils, and the relations of soil and climate to the 
several kinds of product, will not maintain good econ- 
omy, or make good bargains. The true farmer must 
be neither a mere . theorist, nor a dull-minded drudge, 
following in the rut made by his father's wheels. While 
he takes off his coat and wipes the sweat from his brow, 
he must have his wits at work too. He must dig 
ditches and make figures. He must throw out rocks, 
and what is quite as hard, must loosen the dull ideas 
that habit has bedded in his brain. He must be alive 
all over, in body and mind, in mind and body. There 
is no business so complex, requiring so much of steady, 
well digested economy, so great sharpness of judgment, 
so nice- a balancing between theory and practice. Ten 
thousand chances are at work about him, and he 
must have his eyes open to them all, — frosts, droughts, 
excess of water, good and bad seeds, insects, diseases, 
good successions of crops, good divisions of fields, ap- 
propriate and cheap manures, the relative yield of har- 



240 AGRICULTURE AT -THE EAST. 

vests, the markets, — all these and a thousand other dis- 
tinct matters he must have in view, and it requires a 
mind full of intelligence and wide awake to observation, 
to choose his way. The time is passing away when 
farming at hap-hazard, raising any thing, any how, any 
where, can be profitable. The farmer of the coming 
age must be a different style of man, or he will come to 
naught. The future owners of the United States, and 
that at no very distant day, are likely to be a class of 
men who understand agriculture as an art ; for just as 
the wealth of manufactures is passing into the hands 
of the great practical operators, so the lands will 
pass, ere long, by the same law, into the hands of 
a class who have skill to manage them profitably; 
while the mere drudges, who are now scrubbing over 
their old dilapidated farms, among rocks and brakes 
and bogs and daisies, will descend, as they ought, to 
the mere rank of day laborers. If there be any class 
of farmers among us, who can not awake to the neces- 
sit}^ of improvement, can not understand that any thing 
is needed but to keep plowing and planting and raising 
weeds, as their fathers did, I am not sure that they had 
not better remove to the west. The new scenes and 
hard trials of western life, and perhaps a good shake of 
ague, will wake them up. If not, if they still adliere 
to their old vegetable habit, that is certainly a better 
place for the spontaneous vegetable growths of all sorts 
than this, and will be for at least two or three genera- 
tions to come. 

But the young man who has a mind awake, a sound 



AGRICULTUKK AT THK EAST. 241 

practical judgment in a sound practical body, can do 
better. K lie lias slender means to begin with, it does 
not follow that he must go where land is cheapest ; cer- 
tainl}^ not if that is the hardest, most uncertain way to 
increase his means, as in many cases it unquestionably 
is. Let him select for purchase some small farm, of 
only twenty or thirty acres, worth perhaps thirty or 
forty dollars an acre, favorably situated for improve- 
ment, and of such a description that it is capable of 
being easily raised in value. On this let him make his 
beginning. There are many such farms in the market, 
which, in five years, can be made worth eighty or one 
hundred dollars per acre, repaying, meantime, by what 
they produce, every expense incurred. I do not say 
that this can generally be done ; for some kinds of land 
are more intractable as regards improvement than 
others. I only say, that a man of sharp-sighted judg- 
ment, assisted by science, will select many such. For 
the first year or two, the land will not pay the expenses 
of labor and manure. But the farther you go, and the 
more expense you make, if wisely made, the better the 
return becomes, till at length, when the soil is brought 
up into the very highest tone possible, the income 
yielded is enhanced in a geometrical ratio; for the 
taxes, the expenses of cultivation, harvesting and 
fencing, are scarcely greater than before, the new 
manure falls into a soil that is already coming into 
hearty and vigorous action, and the growths take their 
spring from a higher level. I doubt whether there is 
any method of increasing in property so certain and 

21 



2-i2 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

easy as this, or any that is more within the bounds of 
rigid computation. So also facts most abundantly 
prove. 

Thus an English gentleman, who, fifty years ago, 
received from one of his estates £5,000 a year, has so 
increased its productiveness, by an improved agricul- 
ture, that he is now receiving £40,000. That is, he 
has so managed the estate, as to make it eight-fold its 
own former value, yielding him, all the time, a large 
and increasing revenue for his own expenditure. Such 
examples are frequent in England. The whole island, 
taken as a single estate, has nearly three-folded its 
power of production, within the last fifty years. To an 
American, passing through, it appears to be a vast cul- 
tivated garden, clean of weeds, covered with luxuriant 
growths, every hedge and field in the nicest keeping, 
and the highest state of production, and yet I heard 
them complaining in Parliament of their wretched and 
slovenly agriculture, and declaring, without scruple, 
and I have no doubt, with truth, that the island is ca- 
pable of being made to yield more than double its 
present product. 

A similar process is going on in Prussia. Vast 
sterile plains of sand, that were considered worthless a 
few years ago, are now producing luxuriant crops of 
wheat. A school-farm that cost two thousand dollars, 
was raised, in twelve years, to the value of twelve 
thousand dollars, by nothing but an improved method 
of agriculture. 

Similar facts are furnished in our own country. 



AGKICULTURE AT THE EAST. 243 

Two gentlemen, in the State of Delaware, bought a farm, 
at the rate of thirty dollars per acre. In a few years, 
the farm had paid all their expenditure, and was found 
producing a clear annual income, equal to the interest 
of $500 per acre. A worn-out farm, near Geneva, in 
the State of New York, was bought for ten dollars per 
acre. At the end of fifteen years, it was found to have 
supported a family, paid its own expenses, and was 
yielding, for the whole four hundred acres, the interest 
money of one hundred and fifty dollars per acre. 

More conclusive still, because it is proof on a larger 
scale, the current price of lands in Dutchess county. New 
York, was, twenty years ago, only twenty or twenty- 
five dollars per acre. They are now selling currently 
at one hundred and one hundred and fifty dollars per 
acre. Meantime, the lands of George Washington, for- 
merly valued at forty dollars per acre, are now selling 
at seven dollars. 

And if you desire proofs closer at hand, there is a 
farmer in our own state, who will tell you that he and 
his father used to sow a himdred acres of rje, to get 
one thousand bushels of the grain, which they sold, one 
year, as he recollects, for six hundred and twenty-five 
dollars. The last year, he sold, from six acres of the 
same land, products to the amount of eight hundred 
dollars; a sum equal to the interest on two thousand 
two hundred dollars per acre. This gentleman began 
with a farm of five hundred acres. Convinced that it 
was too large, he commenced selling it off, and wisely 
reduced it to one hundred and seventj^-five acres, which 



244 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

now, with a much smaller amount of labor, produce a 
much larger income than the whole five hundred, and 
are also worth more in the market. He lately refused 
two hundred dollars per acre, for several acres of land, 
which, twenty years ago, he valued at forty dollars. 
Nor is the experience of this gentleman at all singular. 
Others have realized to a greater or less extent, the 
same general results, by a similar process. I see no 
reason why agriculture may not be prosecuted to ad- 
vantage, on a large scale, as well as any other kind of 
business. But the care, labor and expenditure must be 
proportionate, in order to carry forward the desired im- 
provement. For the same treatment, which will enrich 
twenty acres, will enrich a thousand At the same 
time, twenty acres, well wrought, are better and more 
profitable, than five hundred shiftlessly managed, or 
merely run over to catch what they will yield, of their 
own accord, or under half cultivation. This hitherto 
has been the folly of our agricultural methods. There 
probably is no farm in Connecticut, however large, the 
whole amount of labor and expeniture on which might 
not be more profitably employed on fifty or seventy- 
five acres. 

In view of facts like these, let the young man who 
would emigrate, consider whether it is not better to 
begin with a small farm here, and expect, hj bringing 
it into the very highest cultivation, thus to extend or 
enlarge his property. In ordinary cases, I am quite 
certain, provided he goes to work skillfull}^, that he 
will advance in property more rapidly than he will to 



AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 245 

emigTate. Suppose lie were to remove to the west, say 
to Illinois, and there taking up one hundred and sixty 
acres of new land, at one and a half dollars an acre, 
raise it, during his lifetime, to the value of ten dollars 
an acre, which is quite as much as, in ordinary cases, 
and leaving buildings out of the account, he will do. 
Then he advances on the property invested one thou- 
sand two hundred and seventy -five dollars. If he buys 
forty acres of land here, at thirty dollars an acre, and 
raises its value to one hundred dollars, then he makes 
a clear increase of two thousand eight hundred dollars. 
In the former case, he will be worth, adding the pur- 
chase money to the increased value, fifteen hundred 
dollars. In the other, he vnll be worth four thousand 
dollars. But the purchase money, at the west, is, by 
the supposition, two hundred and twenty-five dollars, 
and here it is twelve hundred dollars. It will cost him, 
however, two hundred dollars, or more, to remove his 
family to the west, leaving a difference of seven hundred 
and seventy -five dollars, which probably will be fully 
compensated by the buildings and fences that he finds 
on his premises ; which makes the original expenditure 
as nearly even as it may be. And thus, with an even 
expenditure, he obtains a property of fifteen hundred 
dollars in one case, and four thousand in the other. 
At the same time, it is far more easv for him to raise 
money here, over and above what is necessary to sup- 
port life, than it is at the west. A farm of forty acres, 
in good cultivation, will yield more of clear income, 
than one of one hundred and fifty at the west, allowing 

21- 



246 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

for the low price of products there, the expense, often 
grea% of transporting them to a market, and the en- 
hanced price of all the commodities necessary to the 
comfort of a family. 

I am well aware that these computations do not 
agree with current opinion. But there is a good reason 
why they do not : for the truth is, that no man or family 
thinks of living here, as the emigrant is compelled to 
live. K you will make up your mind to live here for 
ten or twenty years, in a log-house, with one room and 
perhaps no floor, to sit on stools instead of chairs, to 
have but one suit of clothes, and these of the coarsest 
and cheapest kind possible, to use sugar only as a deli- 
cacy and live on the coarsest fare, to ride in a box 
wagon or cart, to pick your way through forests by 
marks on the trees, and swim rivers for want of bridges, 
to bring up your children without education, foregoing, 
in life, the guidance, and in death, the comforts of re- 
ligion — in a word, if you will sacrifice everything here 
above the range of raw physical necessity, and consent 
to become a barbarian as regards all the refinements 
of life, you will see how it is that the emigrant is able 
to get a start, and why he is supposed to do it so much 
more easily at the west His life is a life of untold 
hardships. He consents to be no more a man but a 
tool, offers up his flesh and his bones to the wear of a 
comfortless, homeless drudgery, that he may prepare 
something for his family. The first generation can 
hardly be said to live. They let go life, throw it away, 
for the benefit of the generation to come after them. 



AGEICULTUEE AT THE EAST. 247 

And these will be found, in most cases, to have grown 
ap in such rudeness and barbarity, that it will require 
one or two generations more to civilize their habit. 

I would not draw a darker picture of the emigrant's 
life than truth requires. Sometimes he is fortunate 
enough, in the place and circumstances of his settle- 
ment, to command a condition of comfort, within a 
short time; but how often does he suffer a lot more 
severe than what I have described. The fever enters 
his dismal hut, and there, away from friends and re- 
mote from sympathy, he closes, with his own hands, 
the eyes of his wife, or, one after another, the eyes 
of his children, for whose sake he emigrated. Or he 
lies shivering with disease himself, while his crops are 
rotting down in the field, and when he has worn out 
his year or two of fever, finds that his constitution is 
fatally broken by it and the other hardships he has 
encountered, leaving him only the wi^eck of his powers, 
and the infirmities of a premature decay. Or the prairie 
fire burns up his cattle, or the late spring frost, or the 
smut, or the rust, or the weevil, or the fly, destroys his 
wheat, while the mortgage, or the bills of his physician, 
hang over him, waiting for the proceeds of the crop 
which has perished. A winter, a whole year of desti- 
tution, is before him and his family; and possibly a 
second year of unrewarded industry. "Well is it if the 
want they suffer and the dismal forebodings which 
haunt them, do not shake their courage, and bring in 
some disease or infirmity that will quite complete their 
misery. Such trials are not extraordinary or singular. 



243 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

Thev are so common as to be considered among tlie 
proper chances of emigration, where it is not fortified 
by abundant means to support such adversities. 

Thus lar I have spoken to the question, as one of 
mere physical economy, or profit and loss. I have 
shown you, I think, that agriculture in Xew England 
is and always may be a profitable interest. There is, 
in fact, no interest in which, at this moment, money 
and industry can be employed to so great profit. So 
far from finding his advantage in emigration to the new 
States of the west, the young farmer, there is scarcely 
room to doubt, may advance in property here, with 
much greater certainty and rapidity, with a sacrifice of 
fewer comforts and an endurance of fewer hardships. 
It only requires more of skill and address and a more 
thorough knowledge of agriculture as an art. Perhaps 
I ought to admit that a man whose only power is in his 
two arms may well enough go where his two arms are 
all that is demanded, but the man who has invention 
and a head to plan out schemes of improvement, had 
much better remain here, where his higher gifts may be 
employed to assist his advances. 

But it would be wrong and even degrading to sus- 
pend the question here. The highest and best interests 
of life, those which add most to its comfort, dignity and 
happiness, are the interests of society and character. 
Whatever man or family removes to any new country 
should understand that he makes a large remove also 
towards barbarism ; for this necessary incident belongs 
to emigration, or a newly colonized state. He leaves 



AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 249 

the laud of scliools and polite education behind him. 
If he settles where land is cheapest, which is the main 
temptation to removal, he goes utterly beyond the 
reach of schools of any sort, there to see his children 
grow up in wildness and ignorance of the world. Or 
if, by much expense, which he is little able to bear, he 
gets up a school, it is kept in some log-hut, by a teacher 
as rude as the place. Not unlikely he will find himself 
in a region where reading and book knowledge are de- 
spised and condemned as among the black arts, and he 
will be mortified to find that his children are more 
ready to make a pride of ignorance than to learn. 
Seeing them grow up a coarse, undisciplined herd 
around him, he will begin to ask what is the advantage 
of growing fine ' wheat out of doors, when he can not 
grow sons and daughters within, fit to comfort his 
life and satisfy his better hopes and more honorable 
feelings ; or why he should care to hunt the wild beasts 
and exterminate the vermin that infest his fields, when 
his children are as wild as they. 

I speak here discriminately and not of western so- 
ciety generally. ISTo man estimates more highly than I 
do the many noble traits in western character. The 
faults it has are most of them only the necessary inci- 
dents of a new social state, and time, it is to be hoped, 
will remove them, as it has been gradually removing a 
similar class of barbarisms in ISTew England. But time 
is requisite. Meanwhile all the inconveniences and 
privations of a new social state must be endured. 

He finds, too, not seldom, that he has gone beyond 



250 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

the pale of society. There is no common character, 
therefore little society, in the people round him. Per- 
haps, which is quite as well, he is totally remote from 
all living beings. He goes forth to his labors, and the 
bark of his dog and the ringing of his ax in the woods 
are the only sounds that break the silence of his retire- 
ment for whole weeks, unless perhaps a straggling 
family of Irish or poor Germans come that way to 
make trial of his hospitality. Better this than the so- 
ciety of some raw upstart village, where adventurers of 
all sorts chanced last year to pitch their tents, hoping 
to build a citv and make their fortune out of each 
other; where the diversions, jokes, frolics and amuse- 
ments have all an outlaw^ character of indecency and 
violence. Here to live, here to bring up sons and 
marry daughters, is a sad inheritance to compensate for 
the single benefit of cheap land and a wide range of acres. 
Doubtless you are little conscious of any such thing as 
society here at home ; for there is much less of it in our 
agricultural towns, than there should be. But it is 
something to live upon a traveled road, to look on 
comfortable houses and churches sprinkled in the dis- 
tance round you, to know the men and families, whose 
farms border upon yours, and to have known their 
fathers before them; something to talk with them 
across the fence, and meet them, every Sunday, at 
church, in their best attire ; something to be in a state 
that is under law and reduced to established order, 
where a homogeneous people feel the common bond of 
social institutions and interests. If there be too little 



AGRICULTUKE AT THE EAST. 251 

society in this, there is yet societ}^, and a humanizing, 
softening power, the loss of which will soon be visible 
in the character and comfort of your families. 

You will most likely find, too, in removing to a new 
country, that you have left behind you all that is valu- 
able in the sacred blessings of religion. And what is a 
Xew England man who is separated from his religion, 
the power that sweetens his family, fortifies his indus- 
try, makes him a king in his little heritage of rocks and 
snows, and, when he has done with these, lord and pos- 
sessor of worlds as durable as the unbending and confi- 
dent principles which support his life? ITot that our 
new countries are destitute of religion, but they have 
so many varieties of religion and false religion and irre- 
ligion mixed together, the confusion is so distracting 
and the medley so barbarous, that an intelligent mind, 
wishing to worship God in some way of intelligence 
and order, can seldom be accommodated. One preacher 
follows another, by such kind of accident as governs 
wandering stars. Often they can not read, sometimes 
they are vagabonds in character, worthier of a prison 
than to be at large, but they have all one qualification ; 
they can hold forth as noisily and hold on as manfully 
as any one may desire. If you have a house of wor- 
ship, it must belong to the public in general, and every 
man must bring in whatsoever teacher or impostor he 
wishes to hear. Ten times in a year, possibly, there 
will come along an educated and qualified preacher, 
one who is able to communicate instruction and con- 
duct a religious service with propriety. You bring out 



252 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

the young barbarians growing up in your family, 
hoping that they will receive some benefit. But they 
are so unused to any intelligent views of religion, that 
they can see no meaning in a manner without phrensy 
and uproar. The best that can be hoped for your 
family is that one will grow up a Presbyterian, another 
a Methodist, another a Baptist, and as many more will 
be Campbelites or Mormons or Infidels. It is well if 
you do not even lose all sense of religious obligation 
yourself, only to have the memory of its hallowed 
scenes and duties return with bitterness unspeakable in 
your dying hours. Or if you retain your sense of 
religion, as the best blessing of life, how often will 
you regret the quiet and hallowed scenes of a New 
England Sabbath, now lost to be seen no more. Your 
nearest approach to such a Sabbath is to sit down alone, 
upon some log in the deep still woods, and let your 
memory of blessings left behind water your eyes with 
tears of sorrow and self-accusation. 

Making all these sacrifices, you will have done it at 
the expense of another, which, if you do not feel it, will 
be even the greater loss to you. You will have sacri- 
ficed home, old localities, old friends and acquaintances, 
the hearth at which fathers and kindred are gathered, 
or the graves where they sleep. This, I know, it may 
be a duty oftentimes to do, and when it is a dut}^, it is 
even a weakness to shrink from it. But we have at 
tained, as a people, to a degree of facility in this kind 
of merit, which is much to be deprecated. I can not 
look upon it as less than a veiy great dishonor, in any 



AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 253 

man or people, to make every tiling of money and 
nothing of affections. The life of man is in his heart-, 
and, if he does not live there, I care not what other 
success may befall him, he does not live. The roots 
that nourish a man's life are in his love — local love, 
family love, love of old friends and familiar scenes, and 
he who has no roots of locality, is not a living man. 
The activity and stir of new scenes and new adventures 
may do something for him, but his activity is dry, 
wearing out life by its friction, only expelling regret, 
never watering the soul with quiet dews of feeling and 
enjoyment. Tearing yourself thus away from old 
scenes and going forth as an emigrant, you become a 
public adventurer and fortune-hunter .among the gen- 
eral herd of adventurers, your views perhaps become 
enlarged by the new scenes in which you mingle, you 
are all enterprise and activity, but it seems to be the 
activity of negation; you want something to give a 
relish to life, perhaps you will never guess what it is 
that you want, but the truth is that you want roots and 
moisture, the feeling of locality and home and custom- 
ary love. A large farm and a fine crop of wheat do 
not, for some reason, yield that genial and mellow sat- 
isfaction which you long for. Possibly you think of 
the old rocky pasture and the white birch wood, and 
the little field of beans and the five loads of potatoes 
and the three milch cows and the old father scowling 
in the meadow, when his scythe hooks round a stone, 
and you wonder why this Eastern imagery keeps 
thrusting itself into your mind, and why, despite of all 

22 



254 . AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

reason, it persists in wearing such a taking look. Ah, 
there is a meaning in this ! it is the effort of your na- 
ture to realize a local love; a sigh never vented in 
words, for that wealth of the heart, wliich possibly you 
relinquished with no thought of its importance, but 
which no measure of good fortune can ever wholly 
compensate. 

Such are some of the thoughts which I have wished, 
on this occasion, to suggest. I can not deny that I am 
instigated to some degree, in these suggestions, by a 
feeling of domestic interest, or the interest of society 
here ; though I have desired not to be, to any such ex- 
tent as can not be justified. I can not be ignorant, I 
do not wish to be ignorant, that the state of Connecti- 
cut has a deep concern in this subject. If the lands of 
this state were brought into that high cultivation of 
which they are capable, it could easily sustain a million 
of people subsisting by agriculture alone. Sustain 
them in greater thrift and happiness, than they will 
ever realize by removal. Our hills and valleys would 
become a scene of beauty for the e3"e to rest upon, such 
as can with difficulty be produced in any other part of 
the national domain. No ornamental rock-work will 
be needed to set off our gardens and landscapes. Na- 
ture's rock-w^ork will stand, and it will be confessed, 
when every cliff is footed with green meadows and 
waving harvests, that we have not one too many. 
Meantime the toil that is necessary to clear our soil of 
what is movable, is just what is requisite to sharpen 
the vigor of our people ; for whetstones are needed to 



AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 2oO 

sharpen a race of men, as truly as to sharpen to a cutting 
edge any other kind of instruments. The necessities 
of a rough country and an intractable soil are good ne- 
cessities. To live easily is dangerous, and, for just this 
reason, there is cause to apprehend that the future gen- 
erations of our western country will become a sluggish, 
inefl&cient race, exactly opposite to their present char- 
acter. 

You will observe, also, that when our population be- 
gins to be considerably enlarged, every kind of public 
charge or expense will be more easily supported. We 
shall have schools of a high order in all our towns and 
villages, stone bridges durable and safe, macadamized 
roads spanning our hills and threading our valleys, 
such as now spread over the map of England, weaving 
all the hamlets together, in a network of easy corres- 
pondence, indicating and also promoting the advanced 
wealth and civilization of the people. The institutions 
of religion, too, will be easily sustained. It will not be 
necessary, as now, in the thinly peopled towns, where 
two or three different sects are struggling ineffectually 
to sustain their feeble churches, to hold them up by 
disbursements of public charity from year to year. 
There will be room for all to prosper together, gather- 
ing ample and efficient congregations, erecting elegant 
churches and commanding the service of a talented 
ministry. And in this view, I have often felt that the 
improvement of our agriculture is connected with con- 
sequences, that even make it a fit subject of religious 
appeal. Sitting in a Board of Missions for the aid 



256 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

of our feeble churches ; hearing their annual tale of dis- 
couragement, the low rate of their taxable property, 
the losses and diminutions they suffer, by emigration, 
and the little hope they offer of ever being able to up- 
hold the institutions, long ago planted by their fathers, 
except as they remain a perpetual charitable incum- 
brance, I have often felt that it were quite as well to be 
sitting in a Board of Agriculture. The first hope 
of these drooping churches is in the improved methods 
of agriculture. Charity may relieve their want, this 
only can change their want to plenty and power. This 
con\"iction it is which has moved me, as a minister 
of religion, to step out of what many will consider my 
appropriate sphere, on the present occasion. I feel 
that I was never more truly within my sphere than 
here. I see the best interests of religion, for all future 
time, depending on the subject which I here present, 
and, if I am so happy as to start new impressions on 
this subject of agriculture, as a New England interest, I 
shall not only add to the comfort and prosperity of our 
state, in other respects, but shall advance the better 
interests of society and character, and do up the work 
of at least one Missionary Board. And with this I 
shall be satisfied. 

To realize this picture of physical and moral im- 
provement, ought, meantime, to be an attractive hope 
to our sons and daughters, detaining them here among 
us, stimulating their inquiries after scientific principles, 
and promoting their invention of new modes of im- 
provement, such as will enrich both them and the great 



AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 257 

and respectable class to whicli they belong. Nor is it 
only they who have an interest in the agricultural im- 
provement of the State. Our cities are dependent for 
their growth and prosperity on the same causes. Let 
them not forget, while seeking, by railroads and other 
expensive methods, to command a back country for 
their trade, that it is possible to make one close at 
hand. As large a back country can be made between 
Hartford and Litchfield, as now we should have, com- 
manding the trade of all who occupy the region be- 
tween* us and Albany. There can be as many people, 
as much wealth, as many wants to supply, as many 
products to sell and to purchase, as much to foster the 
wealth and future growth of our city. In the fortunes 
of agriculture we are all alike interested and we are all 
united, men of the city, men of the country, politicians, 
tradesmen, householders, landholders, friends of relig- 
ion and friends of the state, to join hands in the promo- 
tion of agriculture as our common cause. The reviv- 
ing of this interest will give a spring to public spirit 
among us, set us forward in social refinement, impart 
courage and strength to every good interest. Mean- 
time, could we make our country and its people such a 
spectacle as it should be, attracting the eyes of the na- 
tion, and showing to the younger and wilder portions 
what scenes of comfort, character and ornament may be 
prepared, on this rugged soil and under these frowning 
skies, it is fairly impossible to overestimate the impulse 
such a spectacle would give to all the better interests 
of our great and rising nation. 

22^ 



258 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

Siififer me now, gentlemen, in closing, to suggest a 
few things, that demand your attention. Agricultural 
societies are useful, but they do not exhaust your duty. 
Do not overlook those expedients which dignify agTi- 
culture. A great deal more of attention to domestic 
and rural architecture is demanded. A house can as 
well be thrown into a form pleasing to a cultivated eye, 
as into any other. Study situation, material, plan, 
form, color, everything that ' belongs to picturesque 
effect. And if your country joiners will not know any 
thing better than to build you an oblong clapbdarded 
box, with a gable to the street, either become your own 
architect, or go to one who has taste and experience to 
draft a plan and elevation for you. Put your stye and 
your barns where they belong. Try your hand at 
high ornamental cultivation upon, at least, a small 
space of ground before and about your residences. Let 
it appear to the passer-by, when he looks upon your 
neat combinations of architecture, shades, flowers and 
smoothly shaven turf, that a man lives here, who is 
something above a mere drudge and sloven ; a man 
who has tastes and cultivated opinions, not a servant of 
barns and cornfields, who only grazes with his cattle, 
and is capable of no other enjoyment. Let your sons 
and daughters also have the benefit of these tasteful ar- 
rangements; for it will do more for their standing, 
character, and future happiness, than may at once ap- 
I^ear. 

Have a special care also of j^our schools. One great 
reason why agriculture droops is, that the intellectual 



AGEICULTURE AT THE EAST. 259 

force, the ideas of the youth, are not awakened. Be 
dissatisfied with your schools and your children if you 
do not see their enthusiasm kindled. Some text-book 
ought also to be introduced into every school, which 
teaches the first principles of agriculture, including the 
rudiments of botany, vegetable physiology and chem- 
istry, all as related to each other ; the laws of growth, 
the science of budding and grafting, the modes of in- 
vigorating soils, the modes and uses of drainage, not 
omitting the economy of raising weeds. A few first 
principles of scienjoe, once wrought into the mind, will 
have a wondrous power. You are to understand also, 
that the old class of drudges, who have lived out two- 
thirds of their life, without a thought of improvement, 
must die as they have lived. There is no hope in 
grafting upon old stocks. You can never make them 
understand what improvement means. There is even a 
want of orthodoxy in it ; they despise it as a boyish 
folly. The young and fertile mind is your only hope. 

At the same time cultivate society among yourselves. 
Our agricultural classes make too little of society. 
There is a humanizing power in good manners, and a 
quickening power to the mind in social intercourse, 
which no people can afford to spare. It creates a sense 
of character superior to gossip, which is the bane of the 
country, fertilizes good feeling, prepares personal confi- 
dence and self-respect, and redeems labor from a dull 
and brutish habit. Separated from society, man rusts 
into a shy, low-minded, selfish being, and becomes as 
mean and contracted in his prejudices, as he is in his 



260 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 

sphere of life. Having the greatest resj)ect for agricul- 
ture, I can not flatter it with vain compliments. Let 
not the impression, that agriculture makes a more intel- 
ligent and elevated class of men than manufacturers, be 
too confidently adopted. It does, undoubtedly, pro- 
duce a better and more healthy staple to make men of 
But in manufactories, certain great laws of mechanical 
and chemical science are always called into application ; 
these are a kind of leaven to ingenuit}^, a spur to cu- 
rious inquiry and speculation ; and the people,- being 
thrown together, at their work, in a kind of perpetual 
society, also spur and stimulate each other. Hence, 
with less of native volume, there is apt, truth obliges 
me to say, to be more of mental activity among the man- 
ufacturing classes. Science and society are the great 
wants of agriculture. Men grow up in the retirement 
of the fields with grand native capacities, but they 
want some quickening stimulus to keep their minds 
alive, something to awaken curiosity, set them on in- 
quiry and speculation, and bring their rivalries and 
sensibilities into active play. Having this, and being 
men of independence in their station, they will de- 
velop a proportionate dignity and power of character. 
"Withou.t it they sink into the most deplorable dullness, 
and become a backward, rude-minded class. There- 
fore, I say, look to your schools, cultivate society. The 
soul of all improvement is the improvement of the soul. 
There is yet one prospect opened in this subject of 
agricultural improvement, which must be suggested, 
and with that T close. I have already intimated the 



AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 261 

conviction, that nothing but this can save us from an 
entirely new distribution of property. If the small 
farmers do not awake to scientific improvement, and 
prepare to realize their profit, and support the comfort 
of their families on yet smaller estates, great landhold- 
ers will come in to buy up the impoverished farms, in 
the view, at first, perhaps, of converting them into pas- 
tures, as now ihej are doing in Vermont. Then, after- 
wards, these great estates will be brought into improve- 
ment, and the sons of our small owners, who have too 
little character to perceive their true interest, will be- 
come a class of operative workers, or serfs, under the 
great landlords, and we shall have all the miseries of 
European society reproduced here. But if our people 
can take up new thoughts of improvement, and go to 
work as men of intelligence and skill to enrich and fer- 
tilize their small estates, then we shall see our soil, in 
all future time, covered with a thrifty, independent 
race, living in comfort and surrounded with ornament, 
every estate a manor, every house occupied by a lord, 
society an element of republican virtue and moderation, 
and all together a symbol to mankind of the great and 
beneficent truth, that the soil w^as made for man, and 
equal industry the title, under God, to equal and uni- 
versal happiness. 



VII. 

LIFE, OR THE LIVES.^ 



The distinction between objects alive and objects 
without life was one of tlie first things apprehended by 
mankind. The progenitors of the race saw it just as 
we do now. Only it is a somewhat curious fact that, 
when their imagination began to be a little exercised 
about causes, their tendency was rather to resolve the 
lifeless objects by the living, than the living by the 
lifeless; a tendency, which, under modern science, is 
completely reversed. Thus Pan, playing on his pipe, 
they took for a symbol of the All, as his name will in- 
dicate ; conceiving that, in nature, there must be some 
living soul of harmonj^, discoursing ever tunefully with 
itself, and moving mystic dances in the seasons and the 
skies. Afterwards, under a method a little closer to 
philosophy, they began to refer the motions of the 
heavenly bodies to some Soul of the Universe, which 
they supposed to be operating, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, in all such stellar changes. Astrology and 
alchemy appear to have originated in a similar impres- 

* Delivered, in part, as a Lecture, in Hartford and elsewhere, at various 

times 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 263 



sion; as if there were some spirit to be conjured with, 
in the junctions of the stars and the atoms. Even 
Kepler himself, last of the old school of science and 
first of the new, was so thoroughly possessed by the 
soul-myths of science in the former ages, that he looked 
upon the Earth as being, probably, a huge living mon- 
ster, whose breathing caused the tides of the sea, and 
whose gills were the volcanoes. 

Now, as already intimated, the tendency is to resolve 
the mystery of lives themselves, by the causes and 
forces of dead matter. For the prodigious successes we 
have had in the investigation of dead matter, that is in 
astronomy, chemistry, geology, and kindred sciences, 
scarcely allow us to look for success any where, except 
under laws and methods so egregiously magnified by 
the discoveries we have made. Nature figures in our 
thoughts mainly as a vast wheel-movement, steam- 
engine, laboratory, world, so that when we turn our 
thoughts upon a living body, that of man for example, 
and find the heart in it working as a pump, the lungs 
as a fireplace, the eye as a telescope, the ear as a drum, 
we are so much taken with these mechanical discover- 
ies, that we accept them for just what they are not ; viz., 
as a complete solution, an end of all inquiry. Could 
we suffer the question, what keeps the pump in play, 
what works the bellows of the lungs, what makes the 
eye to see, the ear to hear, as telescopes and drums can 
not, we should find that nothing really is solved, but 
that we have quite as many and difl&cult mysteries on 
hand as we had at the beginning. Thus far, even our 



264 LIFE, OR THE LIVES.* 

physiologists themselves appear to have generally had 
their minds holden, by the overpowering laws and 
analogies of dead matter, those of mechanics and chem- 
istry. They talk of life, and raise the true question 
concerning it, but commonly end in some solution that 
quite dispenses with it. Life is a nature too nearly 
metaphysical to hold any determinate figure in their in- 
vestigations. What can they do with lives, taken as 
dynamic forces, not of matter, but sovereign over it? 
These innumerable and mysterious workers that in- 
habit earth and air and sea, filling all things with 
beauty fragrance and motion, compelling brute matter 
to assume millions of definite shapes, to weave and 
blossom and palpitate and rejoice; these soul-like 
creatures, next below us, types of what we are, looking 
up to us in their half-intelligent endeavor and claim- 
ing, as it were, afl&nity with us — what recognition do 
they get from the scientific investigators even of the 
bodies they build and actuate? What need has sci- 
ence of these very questionable entities ? They are too 
thin, too spirit-like, virtual nonentities — let them be 
dismissed. Euled out in this manner. Life becomes a 
virtually dead word, wanting even some kind of intel- 
lectual resurrection to give it a meaning. 

Having this, now, for our object, let us try to 
freshen it a little from a distance, before we enter into 
the deeper subtleties of the question. Suppose that 
some celestial traveler like Voltaire's Micromegas, on a 
visit from the Dog Star to Saturn, should turn his 
journey hitherward to our lower world. Let it be true 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 265 

that, in his native planet, the Dog Star, there is 
nothing but mineral substance; no soil enriched by 
vegetable deposites, no plants, no trees, no animals, the 
inhabitants being fitted with bodies of flint, or feldspar, 
or iron, which want no feeding, because they have no 
process of nutrition or expenditure. The stranger, 
lighting on our orb, finds it covered all over with 
grasses, plants, trees, animals, the waters full of fishes, 
the air itself with birds. What these living creatures 
are and what they are made of he does not know, but 
he will be greatly pleased with the wondrously fresh 
beauty of the landscape, compared with the dry -faced, 
earth-brown, mineral world he came from. His atten- 
tion chances to be fixed on the ground, at a spot where 
he sees a new-looking, tender-colored something, prick- 
ing out, as if coming up to see the light. Sitting down 
to watch the strange creature, and pondering it thought- 
fully in his sluggish, dry brain of asbestos, our little, 
quick- whirling planet reels off a whole century of years, 
which to him are. only minutes, and behold the strange 
thing greening in the sun, gets bulk and adds on 
length upon length, drawing in the charmed atoms 
from the air and lifting up others from the ground, 
till finally a massive, full-grown tree — trunk, limbs, 
leaves, and flowers — stands built up as a living won- 
der, and hangs its wide-spreading parasol of many 
tons weight over his head ! Now he had been a great 
professor of chemistry, we may suppose, for some hun- 
dreds of years, in one of the Dog Star universities, 
watching, all that time, how the metals, and earths, and 

23 



266 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 



acids, and water solutions, and gases, operate in their 
combinations, and what strange figures they will some- 
times make, but he has seen nothing like this. True it 
is only wood — this huge-grown shape — but what is 
wood ? He tries to think it, imagining it is more in 
the nature of limestone or more in the nature of gyp- 
sum, or how the fresh green covering may be an efflor- 
escence of verdigris, or an incrustation of malachite, 
and yet he feels himself to be utterly at fault. And 
then he asks, in his confusion, by what strange spell is 
this new creature conjured up? who is the artist, or 
magician ? what has wrought the miracle ? True phi- 
losopher that he is, he must know the secret of this 
wonder, and, tearing aside the bark and hewing into 
the woody trunk, he lays open to view thousands of 
water-sluices beautifully cut, sees the rivers running up, 
and the rivers running down, but can not guess by 
what engine, worked by what power, the perpendicular 
rivers are made to run. Out of the flowers and the 
fresh growths, perfumes steal upon the sense of his 
stony olfactories, but he asks, in vain, where is the cell 
or chamber in which the odors are distilled ? where is 
the apothecary hid ? Sure there is some spirit within, 
if he could be found, some invisible chemist, hydraul- 
ist, builder,— by what name shall he be called ?* 

Now this Dryad of the tree, this hidden chemist, 
wood-builder, leaf^painter, is Life. All the living 
creatures are fashioned by the life that is in them, and 
about this it is that we now undertake to inquire. 
What is Life, or what are the Lives?— this is to be our 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 267 

question. And the definition I hope to establish is 
this — 



Tliat Lives are wimaterial, soul-lihe powers^ organizing 
and conserving the bodies they inhabit. 

With this definition corresponds, more or less nearly, 
the opinion of Hippocrates, and that of Aristotle 
among the ancients, and that of Yan Helmont, Stahl, 
Hunter, Blumenbach, and Miiller among the moderns ; 
some of them calhng Life the archeusj or governing- 
type and architect of bodies, some the nisus formativits, 
or form-endeavoring power, and all conceiving it, 
under one name or another, as being that unseen force 
which shapes and impels the growth of bodies. The 
opinions of the side opposite I will not stay to detail. 
I will only cite as a qualified representation of them, at 
their latest point of maturity, the statement of Dr. Car- 
penter, in his very thorough and able treatise on the 
'' Principles of Human Physiology." ^'It is now al- 
most universally admitted," he says, ''by intelligent 
physiologists, that we gain nothing by the assumption 
of some general, controlling agency, or vital Principle, 
distinct from the organized structure itself; and that 
the Laws of Life are nothing else than general expres- 
sions of the conditions, under which vital operations 
take place — expressions analogous to those which con- 
stitute the Laws of Physics, or Chemistrj^ — and to be 
arrived at in the same manner, namely, by the collec- 
tion and comparison of phenomena." "The collection 
and comparison of phenomena — " "classification of phe- 



268 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 



nomena/' is the common phrase of the doctrine, and it 
is a little relief to have a change, if it be only in the 
form. Where will be the end of this most incompetent, 
only half-intelligent version of the Baconian philoso- 
phy ? As if the Laws of nature were only collections, 
classifications, of facts ! As if gravity were nothing 
but the fact that stones fall and bodies somehow go to- 
wards one another! As if chemical attraction were 
nothing but the fact that atoms go towards each other, 
as many times repeated as there are atoms! No! 
gravity is the intellectual or idealized conception of a 
power by which bodies go towards each other, Chemi- 
cal Attraction the conception of another kind of power 
by which atoms go towards each other. And just so 
Life is the conception of another and third kind of 
power — a conception which no mind, being a mind, 
can help forming — by which organic bodies are organ- 
ized and conserved. And yet we are told that the 
"Laws of Life" are nothing but classifications of facts, 
as the ''Laws of Physics or Chemistry" are nothing 
but such classifications. And so it is made to appear 
that "nothing is gained by the assumption of some 
general, controlling agency, or vital Principle, distinct 
from the organized structure itself;" that living beings 
can be just as well understood without considering 
them to be alive — understood, that is, by their mere 
structure! Why then does this learned professor go 
on to speak of "Life," and "Vital operations," and 
"Functions of Life?" What are vital operations, 
which suppose no vital principle? What are functions 



LIFE, OK THE LIVES. 269 

of life, when life itself is nothing but a name for the 
functions of dead matter ? Are the functions of intelli- 
gence nothing but functions without intelligence? or 
do they suppose some intelligent power, whose func- 
tions they are ? 

The professor is confirmed in his mistake, by 
another, which appears and reappears at many points 
in his very scientific and talented book. Thus he in- 
forms us in the very next section, (§ 258,) that -'AH 
vital phenomena are dependent on, at least, two sets of 
conditions ; an organized structure possessed of pecul- 
iar properties, and certain stimuli, by which these 
properties are called into action." Take for example 
the seed of a plant, instanced by him in another place. 
It is a nucleus of organized matter. The Life ascribed 
to it means nothing but that, as a grain of matter, it is 
thus and thus organized. But it will not grow simply 
because it is so organized. It must have the stimuli 
of water, air, heat, soil and the like, and these, acting 
on the tissues of the seed, cause it to grow. Now it is 
very true that these are ^'conditions" necessary to its 
growth, but the mistake is in assuming, that the condi- 
tions are causes. Heat is a condition of digestion, does 
it therefore digest ? Breathing is a condition of writing 
poetry, does it follow that the air breathed writes the 
poetry? We are dependent on ten thousand condi- 
tions, in all that we do, but these conditions are not 
causes of what we do. No more do the conditions re- 
ferred to cause the activity of growth in a seed. It 
grows because it is alive, and has found the conditions 

23^ 



270 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

necessary to growth. And when these conditions are 
called stimuli^ it is only assuming, by a word, that they 
are the causes, when the real causation is in the Life it- 
self. The stimuli would have a hard time with the 
seed, I think, if it was dead. Stimuli for the dead are 
not efficacious. 

But the physiologists get a further bent in this direc- 
tion, by what they suppose to be a more definite kind 
of knowledge. They distinguish, in the animal and 
vegetable economj^, certain infinitesimal creatures of 
life, which they call "cells.'' They float in the blood 
and the sap and elsewhere, elaborating the nutritive 
matter, and constituting, as in the egg, or the seed, 
germs of nourishment and reproduction. For these 
cells of nutrition, they conceive, and cells of reproduc- 
tion, are what feeds the growth, and molds the organ- 
ism, and keeps in a way of development all the species 
and generations of the living bodies. 

But the cells themselves are just as much alive, it is 
agreed, as bodies are, and the question, whether it is 
the life of the body by which they are organized, or 
they which organize the body ? is just as far from settle- 
ment as ever. There is much reason here to suspect 
an imposition. It has required such wonderful acute- 
ness to hunt down these infinitesimal creatures, distin- 
guishing whence they come and whither they go, that 
the investigator imagines he must now have gotten 
hold of nature's last secret, even the secret of life! 
Were these organized specks as big as peas, or walnuts, 
they would find the question still on hand, whether 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 271 



tliey were organized by the life, or by the mere struc- 
tures they nourish and propagate? But these are so 
very small that they can not hunt them any farther. 

Meantime, there is one great fact which raises a 
strong presumption of their relation to the Life princi- 
ple as mere secondaries ; viz., that the animal races cer- 
tainly were not created originally as germs, but as full- 
grown bodies ; for how could the races of birds, for ex- 
ample, begin at the condition of eggs, with no parent 
bird to hatch them ? and how could the young of other 
animals be kept alive, without their dams to feed 
them? In all which it is clear, beyond a question, 
that lives and full-formed living bodies were created 
first, and had the priority of all the sperm-cell and 
germ-cell operations. The mere mineral world, unin- 
habited as yet by living creatures, could not compose 
the germs of any thing, and as the animal races cer- 
tainly did not come out of germs originally, we natu- 
rally believe that all creatures of life, animal and vege- 
table, began, as creatures, in the full activity or on- 
going of life. 

At this point much discussion was raised a few years 
ago, by Cross, an English experimenter, who claimed 
that, by passing a current of galvanism, for some 
months, through the liquor of flints, he produced living 
insects. But his experiment found little credit. His 
supposed insects were accounted for, by the fact that 
the water and the air are filled with innumerable seeds 
of plants and eggs of insects, some of which he was 
able to hatch, and nothing more. When such an ex- 



272 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

periment really succeeds, physiology itself will be down, 
and we shall be obliged to go back to the mineral 
world and its chemistry for the germinal spring of all 
organized bodies. Propagation by structure is just as 
truly superseded as propagation by the vital force. 

Thus far, we have been occupied controversially. 
Let us go back now to our definition, and verify it, by 
a more positive exhibition of Life in its effects and inci- 
dents. 

My definition supposes that Lives are, in some sense, 
immaterial and have a soul-like nature. This impres- 
sion will be more and more distinctly verified as we 
proceed with the illustrations now to be given ; for I 
shall conduct you, if you follow me, into a marvelous 
world, back of our material, corpuscular philosophy, 
where creatures busy as angels and like them invisi- 
ble save by their works, are ever employed in building, 
repairing, actuating, and reproducing their multiform 
bodies; with a power over matter and all chemical 
af&nities, as affinities of matter, which is only the more 
sublime, that it appears to be a sovereignty from with- 
out, superior to all forces within. 

Observe then, first of all, the mysterious sovereignty 
of the vital forces over the forms of living bodies al- 
ready existent. Every man, for example, changes the 
whole matter of his body many times during his life. 
We look upon it as remaining the same, recognize it by 
its color and form as being the identical body we 
looked upon years ago. The man himself has a fixed 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 273 

impression of this identity. And yet his body is more 
like a river running by, than like a body remaining 
constant in the constancy of its material. It is not 
like a crystal where the form is cast by the law of the 
matter itself, and remains because the matter remains. 
On the contrary, a living body takes up new matter, 
and throws off old matter, and the matter it takes up 
for one year is different, even in kind, from the matter 
it took up the year previous, and yet the body remains 
the same; keeps up all its angles colors and looks, 
showing no perceptible shade of difference. The river 
of its matter keeps every dimple and eddy of the sur- 
face just as it was whole years ago. In all which we 
perceive, as plainly as possible, that there is some force, 
sovereign over the matter, which stays by, more con- 
stant than the matter, to give it a shape of its own, and 
keep it in the outward show of constancy. And this 
hidden power must be immaterial ; for it is not any law 
of the matter, but a j)Ower coming down upon matter 
to configure it always to itself. It is therefore called 
the nisus formativus by Blumenbach and others, and 
pertains, if not to the matter, to the Life-Principle it- 
self. 

But the Physiologists of the school just referred to, 
have it for their answer, that the structure is kept up 
by the structure, the form by the form. It begins, 
they say, with a germ having all the rudimental ducts 
and tissues of the future body, which ducts and tissues 
guide all the accruing matter of growth or nutrition to 
its place, and so perpetuate themselves and the shapes 



274 LIFE, OR THE LIVES 



of the body. All which is so far true as that they are 
the media, or means, by which the result is accom- 
plished. But media, or means are not powers, but 
only that by which some power acts ; which power is, 
in this case, the life. Ducts and tissues, taken as mere 
matter thus and thus posited, are, by the supposition, 
only mechanical textures and arrangements — able, in 
themselves, to do nothing, least of all, any thing by 
which they may reproduce themselves. Or if we take 
them as chemical arrangements, like the plates of a bat- 
tery, they can have no action but a chemical action de- 
structive to themselves. If they might possibly de- 
compose the food given them to act upon, they could 
only turn it into its chemical products, or equivalents ; 
they could not make one fibre of flesh out of it, or even 
so much as a grain of genuine bone. Still less, having 
varieties of food to act upon, could they manage to be 
always recomposing the same body. A seed, for ex- 
ample, contains a grain of matter, mechanically and 
chemically adjusted. How can that grain of matter — 
carbon, potash, hydrogen, water, and the like — manip- 
ulate whole tons of other carbon, potash, hydrogen, 
and water, as in the growth of a tree? shaping that 
growth, from year to year, and when it is broken by 
storms, or felled upon the ground, reconstruct the 
house it was building, ducts, tissues, and all, so as to 
compose a new shape different from the first ? Mech- 
anism and the chemistry of dead matter can do no such 
thing. Put in the life and you have a power that is 
adequate. 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 275 

Or, we may take a different illustration. Cut off the 
head of a snail, and the body will grow out another 
head. Cut in two a little water animal called the hy- 
dra, and the head part will grow out a tail, and the tail 
part a head. Do the ducts and tissues then of the head 
contain the future ducts and tissues of a tail, and those 
of the tail contain those of a head ? How little does it 
signify to say that structure and form, in such cases, 
keep good structure and form! How can head-struc- 
ture make tail-structure, and tail, head ? The solution 
gets no show of reason, till we conceive some vital 
force invisible, dwelling equally in both the head and 
the tail, which wants a complete body and formatively 
endeavors after such a body. And this soul-like force, 
called the Life, formless in itself because immaterial, 
has yet a formative instinct natural to its activity, 
which, as it inhabits and works in matter, weaves 
eyerj tissue of its body, animal or vegetable, directs 
every particle of matter where it shall go, only using 
the structural order for its means, shapes every limb, 
colors every hair, or feather, or leaf, and presides in all 
the living forms, as the conserving principle of con- 
stancy and kind. The bees in their hive are not more 
sovereign over the wax, than are these wonderful life- 
powers over the structures they build. And it might 
as well be imagined that the cells themselves account 
for the honey, and also for the cells of the next year, 
as that the form of a plant, or of a human body, 
is nourished and kept good by its mere structural func- 
tions. 



276 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

I assume it then, without further debate, that all liv- 
ing bodies are organized and conserved by lives, opera- 
ting in and through the structural machinery of their 
parts, or of their germs. Every life has a kind pecul- 
iar to itself, and wants a form to live in, which it has 
power given it, under certain conditions, to construct 
and maintain — the life of a man a man's body, the life 
of a tree a tree's body, the life of a bird a bird's body. 
We look about us in the populous domain of air and 
earth and water, and see the matter whirling, so to 
speak, in eddies of vital activity, taken up and given 
out, growing and decaying, assisting now in the struc- 
ture of a man's brain, a short time ago breathing in the 
leaves of forests and blossoming in the flowers of prai- 
ries, and, a short time before that, slumbering in the 
vegetable mold of soils made fertile by its contributions. 
A year hence, liberated, or getting a respite from the 
fearfully hard work it is put to, in carrying on the 
thinking of a brain, it will speed away as a gas let 
forth to have a holiday in the grand circulation of uni- 
versal nature, and will next be taken up by all the 
lives of all the elements, and w^ill go darting in the 
fishes, roaring in the lions' throats, and buzzing in the 
wings of insect life all round the world. The lives 
themselves endure but for a time, but are a great deal 
more constant than the clay they vitalize, and wield 
their sovereignty oyer it, as long as they stay, by the 
commission they hold from Him who rejoices in their 
beautiful and beauty-making activity. 

We come now to a class of illustrations where the 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 277 

distinctness of lives from all mere qualities and powers 
of matter will be more easily seen, and will be as much 
more clearly indisputable. I speak of the points in 
which they triumph over, and subordinate to their 
uses, all the known laws of inorganic matter. 

Thus it is a known law of matter, and of all ma- 
chines, however nicelv constructed out of matter, that 
they are under a law of inertia, or that being at rest 
they will remain so, unless put in motion by some force 
or cause that is not in themselves. Matter and mech- 
anism have no j)ower to begin, or carry on a course of 
activity themselves. Take the seed once more for an 
illustration. Call it a mere structure, mechanically and 
chemically formed. Place it in the ground, and there 
it will lie, as quiet a lump as Prospero's island, sown in 
the sea "to bring forth more islands." The water of 
the ground will soak it, and the heat will warm it, but 
it will only be a lump of matter, a structural machine, 
soaked and warmed, and the motions of a growing pro- 
cess will no more be started in it, by so much water 
and heat, than if it were a watch planted in the same 
manner. We do indeed say, in common familiar lan- 
guage, that the seed will be started. But we mean, if 
we understand ourselves, not that so much water and 
heat break the inertia by their impulsion — that is in- 
conceivable, for they have no impulsion more than the 
seed-matter itself — we only mean that the Life, before 
inert, takes occasion from its favoring conditions and 
commences the circulating, growing, motion from itself 
We regard the seed, in other words, not as a mere com- 

24 



278 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

pounded lump, or structure, but as having Life, a 
power not under conditions of inertia at all, a power 
which, does not move simply as being moved, but as 
being self-active in its own nature. 

And just so it is with all the going on of a living 
body, after the activities of its living state are begun. 
By its frictions and other expenditures it would soon 
exhaust its powers of activit}^, and drop into the state 
of inertia, like a spent rocket falling to the ground, if 
it were not for the continuing forces of the life, by 
which its activities are renewed. No, say the advo- 
cates of mere structure and chemistry, the body only 
takes in new matter, by its feeding and breathing, by 
receiving more light, and heat, and electricity, and the 
chemical forces thus contributed keep the machine still 
agoing. I hardly know how to speak with due respect 
of a theory that makes a very little, almost tiny, amount 
of science go so far, and solve a problem of such won- 
derful complexity. Take a human body, fibered, vas- 
culated, innerved, articulated, digesting, secreting, ab- 
sorbing, breathing, circulating, carrying on even thou- 
sands of distinct operations, at hundreds of thousands 
of distinct points, all necessary to each other, so that 
when some tiny process, never perceived by man, slips 
its duty and the proportionate working is but a little 
changed, the equilibrium called health is overset — con- 
ceive all this, then conceive that this multifarious world 
of operative powers plays on, still on, asleep and awake, 
for sixt}^ or a hundred years, mastering heat, and cold, 
and breakage, in a thousand forms; whereupon the 



LIFE, OK THE LIVES. 279 



cliemist, who has gotten hold of a few simple laws of 
inorganic matter, tells you that he can solve it; that 
we take in food and the food put into the structure, as 
a machine, makes force and carries on the play and re- 
places the waste, and that so the machine keeps every- 
thing, even the machine itself, in order, proportion, and 
prolonged operation! The body is, in this view, 
nothing but a laboratory, gotten up with just so many 
parts as there are functions, and they all play together, 
making it a body. Carry out the figure, now, and see 
what is in it. The chemist has a laboratory, full of 
vials, bottles, acids, alkalies, all manner of simples, and 
all manner of salts, with combustibles, and fires, and 
galvanic batteries, and force-pumps, and gasometers, in 
short, a little universe of chemical substances and ma- 
chineries. JSTow his doctrine of the body is just as if, 
connecting all these vessels, and substances, into a 
chemical circle, by pipes, and pumps, and sponges, and 
wire-conductors, and going to his digester, he were to 
put in there three times a day a loaf of bread, which 
has in it such a wonderfully wise-acting set of forces, 
that, passing into the grand circuit of the laboratory, he 
imagines it to keep all the parts in play and sound con- 
dition — the vials just as full as they were and of the 
same substance, the galvanic batteries eaten up by the 
acids still sound and good as before, the combustibles 
going off in gases replaced by new combustibles, the 
ices dissolved replaced by freezing, and the vapors 
thrown ofi^, by condensing, and even the iron digester 
itself renewed in the wear, by the nourishing force of 



280 LIFE, OR THE LIVES 



the bread that is dissolved by it. What a magnifi- 
cently preposterous solution is this to be offered in the 
name of science ! And vet the same kind of solution 
put upon the body, vrith such easy complacency, is at 
least a hundred times more preposterous, as the body- 
laboratory is at least a hundred times more complex. 
Xow it is very true that living bodies require food — 
food is the material on which thev work ; it is also true 
that a man wants a little more food when he is in a 
gi^eat stress of labor, than when he is doing nothing, 
but it certainly is not true that men have their capaci- 
ties, bodily or mental, graduated by their consumption 
of nutriment. Steam-boilers are graduated in their 
force exactly in that way, but not living bodies. Xo, 
we get no real conception of a living body, till we see a 
chemist in it, a power of life that, like a reigning in- 
stinct, dominates in every part as a revivifying princi- 
ple, sending into every member and function just the 
matter wanted to keep it good, and vitalizing all by the 
play of its own self-active nature. Xow the body is no 
more a mere machine, no lono'er under the law of iner- 
tia, because it has an architect, preserver and impeller, 
operating all its fimctions, and making it a living 
creature. Call it wheels, if you please, call it this, or 
that, or all instruments of machinery, still you under- 
stand it not, till you see the spirit of the living creature 
in the wheels. 

We pass now to another point that is less difficult ; 
viz., the triumph of the life-power over the force of 
gravity. Here we have it as a great law of matter 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 281 



that every particle tends towards every other, and 
thus all surface particles towards the earth's center. 
But a bird, beating on the air, lifts its body against 
gravity. An elephant, resting on the ground, wills to 
rise, and forthwith his enormous bulk is seen lifting it- 
self upward more speedily even than a small steam- 
engine could do it, with all needful ropes and pulleys. 
True, he does it by his will contracting his muscles, 
and so far mechanically. But how were the muscles 
contracted? By a single thought of his living brain, 
running out as a fiat into his massive body. And that 
fiat of the vital force has the sovereignty, thus far, 
over gravity. Take also a case where the function of 
will is less apparent — the case of a seed erecting itself 
into a tree, one of the great trees of California, for ex- 
ample, twenty-five feet in diameter, and four hundred 
and fifty feet high. A part of the matter, it is true, is 
not lifted from the ground, but is gathered from the air 
itself. As regards the part carried up in the sap of the 
tree, possibly the body of the tree, consisting of a 
bundle of capillary tubes, may be imagined to carry up 
such quantities of water and food, by the mechanical 
force called capillary attraction. But a dead tree has 
the same capillary tubes as a living, why then does not 
the sap ascend in a dead tree? Besides it has been 
found by an experiment that is fatal to this conjecture, 
that a grape-vine, cut off" in the spring, will force up a 
column of sap against a superincumbent column of 
water forty-three feet high. This prodigious pressure 
upward, exceeding, by one-third, the pressure of our at- 

24- 



282 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

mosphere, has little resemblance, it must be agreed, to 
capillary attraction. Dismissing this solution, we are 
left in a degree to conjecture. Perhaps the result is ac- 
comphshed by alternate contractions and dilatations, 
too delicate to be perceptible, in the veins of the wood ; 
or it may be accomplished by similar contractions and 
dilatations in the little sponges at the ends of the roots. 
In either case, the machinery is played by the life- 
power of the tree, as the heart by the life-power of the 
human body. Be the solution what it may, this at 
least is clear, that gravity has been somehow mastered, 
and that no mere laws of matter can account for it. 
' Again the laws, or conducting forces of heat, are 
mastered in the same way. Every living creature tries 
to keep its equilibrium in respect to heat. Thus Hun- 
ter found that the heart of a living tree, when the at- 
mosphere was below 66^, was higher than the atmos- 
phere, and as much lower, when it was below 56^. A 
dead tree meantime conforms to the temperature of the 
atmosphere. I transplanted a cherry-tree in my 
grounds, some years ago, doing it too late in the 
season. About the beginning of August it rallied 
and put forth its leaves, and having now a whole sum- 
mer's work to do to get its buddings ready for the next 
year, the poor thing still kept on, tugging patiently 
against the frosts of autumn, holding every leaf in its 
green, long after all other trees around it were bared as 
in winter. Dismissing any conceit of poetic sympathy 
which might try to endow it with a will, it is certainly 
not incredible that having its acme of life-power, late in 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 283 

tte season, it asserted itself against the frosts longer 
than the other trees could. Enough that it lives to 
boast its victory. One of the most inert forms of life is 
the egg. Still it is found that a dead egg, or one that 
has been killed by freezing, will freeze in a much 
shorter time than a live one exposed to the same cold. 

Now the chemists are much pleased with the sup- 
posed discovery that the equilibrium of heat, main- 
tained by animal bodies, may be accounted for by the 
mere chemical laws of matter. Passing by other 
subordinate causes alleged, they show, first, that in 
breathing, we take in oxygen into the lungs, where it 
unites with the carbon principle of the blood, and then 
that, by the outgoing breath, we throw it off as car- 
bonic acid gas — exactly what takes place in the com- 
bustion of wood, or coal ; where the fire is carbon 
uniting with oxygen, and the smoke is principally car- 
bonic acid gas. The lungs, in this view, are a real fire- 
place in the body and by that central fire the body is 
kept warm. But it happens that we sometimes want to 
be cooled, in order to have our equilibrium ; as when the 
fireplace heat of the lungs, added to the summer heat 
without, would make us uncomfortable. And here the 
body forthwith dews itself all over with perspiration, 
which liquid moisture, passing into vapor, takes up a 
thousand degrees of latent heat from the body, and car- 
ries it off*, leaving the body cooled and comforted by 
the change. Yes, gentlemen, your fireplace and evap- 
orator do belong to the body, and they operate in the 
precise way alleged. But there are one or two ques- 



284 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

tions that remain, where your philosophy quite breaks 
down. In this fireplace of the lungs, you have a fire 
that burns at 96^ of heat, will you explain how that is 
done ? what is it here that puts oxygen to combining 
with carbon, at the temperature of 96°? You have 
oxygen and carbon at your command, will you show 
us how their chemical union, making carbonic acid 
gas, can be accomplished by the laws of the two sub- 
stances, at this low temperature ? This you say is a 
fire, can you make such a fire chemically in your labo- 
ratory? No, the life-principle is the magician, or 
priest, that marries these two elements, and does it by 
its own sovereignty — ^you can not do it by any laws of 
matter that you know. You come back thus, after all, 
to the life and that it is, you will see, that makes the 
fire. 

That also it is, you will perceive, that operates your 
cooling process. The water perspired and then evapo- 
rated is the means employed, just as your solution sup- 
poses, but the question still remains, why does the per- 
spiration, or exudation of moisture, come out when it 
is wanted ? Taking one of our familiar expressions for 
a literal truth, you may imagine that the heat itself 
brings it out. But that is impossible. Heat will bring 
out steam from a moist body but never water to be 
evaporated afterwards. The question for you is, what 
power brings forth the water as water? for on that 
everything depends. A log of moist wood will not 
perspire, neither will a dead body. Why then does a 
living? Because the Life-Power, superintending the 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 285 

gates of the skin, sends the moisture out when it is 
wanted, acting as it were by some wise instinct, or un- 
conscious reason, for the comfort and conservation of 
the body. 

We come now to a wider field of wonders, where the 
Lives are seen to be triumphing, at all points, over the 
chemical aflS.nities of matter ; acting each as a chemist 
in his own right, and constructing, in this manner, sub- 
stances that, under the mere laws of inorganic matter, 
could never exist. All the animal and vegetable sub- 
stances have thus an imposed chemistry, a chemistry 
not in the matter as such, but put upon the matter, by 
the lives working in it. Each Life, in fact, has a 
chemistry of its own, and, coming down thus upon mat- 
ter, it composes substances of its own. The vegetable 
lives begin, soiling over the otherwise mineral-faced 
world with the rich black mold they contribute by 
ages of growth and decay ; the animals follow, living 
on the vegetables and upon each other ; and all go on 
together, making, each, their own kind of substance — 
such as no chemist can make; such as by the mere 
laws of inorganic chemistry can not begin to exist; 
such, in fact, as God himself never made, save in the 
first. living creatures organized by His power. 

The article sugar, for example, is a vegetable pro- 
duct, and is constituted by the union of carbon, oxy- 
gen, and hydrogen. But no chemist can unite these 
three elements, and produce the substance called sugar. 
He can decompose sugar, and show what elements are 
in it, but he can not invert the process; for the ele- 



286 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

ments have no law of union in themselves, of which he 
can avail himself. He can unite hydrogen and oxygen, 
and produce water ; he can unite oxygen, nitrogen, and 
potash, and produce saltpetre. But no one of all the 
vegetable and mineral substances can he produce. Lig- 
nin, tannin, acids, oils, perfumes, poisons, nutritive and 
healing products — not one of these can he compose by 
his utmost art. The Life-power of the beet, the maple, 
the sugar-cane, coming down upon the refractory atoms, 
imposes a chemistry upon them they have not in them- 
selves, and so contributes to our comfort this article of 
sugar. And just so it is that, by a kind of sorcery in 
Lives, all the immense products necessary to our build- 
ing, clothing, and feeding processes, are prepared. The 
poor chemist follows after, and, trying his hand upon 
matter, is able to produce no one of them. It is as if 
there were some spell upon things, which he can not 
understand ; or as if the lives had power to set matter 
whirling by their magic touch, and were showing him 
their freaks of skill to mock his perplexity. Colors 
blush out that he can not make, odors fly whose secret 
he can not guess. Substances are grown w^hich he 
could as easily create a world as make. All his ex- 
periments show him that the science he delights in 
makes him master only of the chemistry of death, and 
he gives up in despair. The lives that swarm about 
him are all so many chemists, wiser, every one, and 
mightier, in a sense, than he. 

I must not omit, in this connection, to name one sin- 
gular attribute of lives, in this field of chemistry, which 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 287 



reveals a prerogative scarcely credible; viz., tliis, the 
power to make different, widely different, substances, 
out of exactly the same material in exactly the same 
proportions. Thus it is laid down even by Liebig, that 
animal fibrin, and animal gelatin, and animal casein, 
and vegetable fibre, albumen, casein, and gluten, have 
all exactly the same analysis. In the same way starch, 
gum, and cane-sugar, have precisely the same elements, 
in precisely the same proportions, different, as they cer- 
tainly are, in their tastes and properties. Almost any 
man, I think, would say that this is impossible; and 
yet the best chemists are obliged to agree that so it is. 
What can be more distinct to the taste and in the prop- 
erties of use, than starch and sugar ? It is as if some 
immaterial property went over to the product, giving 
it a quality from the life, that stays by and makes it 
different, while the matter is the same. But we hardly 
know what we mean, when we make the suggestion. 
It signifies principally that we are utterly confused and 
lost in the chemical mysteries of life. 

Having shown, by these illustrations, on how large 
a scale the lives are found subordinating the properties 
and laws of inorganic matter, we will look at them 
finally in a little more direct aspect, considering what 
they are in themselves. 

It is one of the grand distinctions of man, as a free 
being, that he acts from himself and not as a being 
caused to act. On this account, or in virtue of this 
prerogative, he is responsible. ?fow the lives are all 
types of man in this highest point of his nature ; for 



288 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

they all act from themselves, as truly as man, only they 
do it instinctively and not by will. The human heart, 
for example, does not go because physical impulsions 
of any kind are on it, for there are no such impulsions ; 
but it goes because the life is a causative nature in it- 
self, and plays the machinery of the pulse by its own 
spontaneous sovereignty. So, when a seed quickens 
in the ground, it is not, as we have seen, because stimuli 
begin to play upon it there, mechanically or chemically, 
that it quickens, puts its pumps in motion and prepares 
to raise a tree. There is no mechanical force in the 
ground, and no chemical, that can start a growth- 
motion of any kind. All we can say is, that the life- 
power of the seed, having found the fit conditions, be- 
gins to act from its own instinctive force, and puts 
agoing all the circulations of growth from itself. It 
takes hold of matter, thus, as a dynamic outside of 
matter and its laws, and, acting from itself all its life 
long, dominates over the chemistries, composes and 
goes on composing the forms of matter it w^ants for its 
uses, never yielding to the causations of matter till it 
dies. Here then we have, in the lives, a striking re- 
semblance to souls. They have no intelligence, no 
wall, no consciousness, and yet they are all powers out- 
side of matter, acting upon it from a causative nature 
in themselves. 

They have also another point of relationship to 
souls, in what may be called their perceptive and ad- 
justive instinct. We speak of the 'instinct of animals, 
that bv which the crow builds its nest, that by which 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 289 



the bees construct their comb, anticipating, as it were, 
in the six-sided figure of their cells, the mathematical 
problem, which shows that six-sided prisms are the 
figure that has the largest containing power, with the 
least surface, yet packing in a solid body. Just so 
there is in the lives an instinct, answering to intelli- 
gence, though not intelligent. They construct tissues 
and textures that, put in the microscope, are more won- 
derful in their order, a thousand times, than the order 
of the hive. Let any one but look through the plates 
of a late treatise on phj^siology, and he will be aston- 
ished by the revelations of the lives there exhibited. 
When a living body, animal, or vegetable, is wounded, 
there is seen, at once, to be a wondrous instinct, a hid- 
den nurse, of self-preservation in it. A battered rock, or 
broken crystal, stays broken, unable to think of repair. 
But the life, in such a case, begins forthwith to nurse 
its violated body, tends and cleanses the wound suf- 
fered, casts off the dead matter, deposites new growths 
on all sides of the breach, knits together the lacerated 
fibres and tissues by a process that no human surgery 
can even trace, and thus restores the original soundness. 
We have, in our salt waters, a little animal called the 
horer. He lies in the mud and lets down a long pro- 
boscis with a file on it, till, by various trials, he finds a 
small round clam which is to be his prey. He selects 
the thinnest part of the shell and commences there a 
process of filing, to make his way through. A friend 
of mine once showed me a shell thus attacked by the 
borer, in which the inhabitant inside, taking note of the 



290 LIFE, OK THE LIVES. 

filing on the outside, began, at once, to secrete, or de- 
posite, a new thickness of shell to keep his enemy ofi; 
And here it was, a newly completed counterscarp, 
drawn across the breach two or three lines inward, 
which the borer had also to break, before he could 
reach his prey! Here j^ou see the instinct of self- 
preservation acting even prophetically, and preparing 
to repel future injury. And this again must be taken 
as an instinct of the life ; for the animal concerned is an 
animal without a head, and therefore, if phrenology be 
true, not very well off for intelligence. 

It is only another form of the same general fact, that 
the lives appear to have instincts of perception and of 
measurement. Thus a tree which is fond of water, 
when planted near some brook, will set off all its prin- 
cipal roots in that direction. How does it know the 
water to be there ? And how does it know that it will 
be able to reach the border of it ? To say, in popular 
phrase, that the water attracts the roots in that direc- 
tion, is to invent a new and very remarkable sort of 
attraction. An attraction that pulls at roots in the 
ground, and turns them at the point of starting, is a 
something created to account for the fact in question, 
which is even more difl&cult than the fact itself Mr. 
Madison, for example, had an aqueduct of logs which, 
in reaching his house, passed by a tree specially fond 
of water, at a considerable distance from it. Abreast 
of the tree there was an auger-hole in the log that had 
been filled with a plug of soft wood. Exactly thither- 
ward the tree sent off a lono; stretch of roots, which 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 291 

forced their way tlirougli the plug, choking up the 
passage, and were found there drinking like so many 
thirsty animals. Was it then the soft wood plug that 
attracted these roots? It certainly should be on the 
attraction principle; for the water was just as near at 
other points as here. 

It is said that a strawberry planted in sand, with 
good earth a little way off, will turn its runners all in 
the latter direction, and that if the good earth is too far 
off to be reached, the plant will make no effort on that 
side more than on the other, which is equivalent to 
saying that the plant has, in its life-principle, an in- 
stinct of measurement. It does not measure the 
ground and then itself, and then compare the two, but 
it has an adaptive power by which, without compari- 
son, it graduates its action by its possibilities. 

Pass now to another point, where the relationship of 
lives to souls is presented in a still higher form of inter- 
est. I speak here of the probability that they are all 
enjoying creatures. As regards the animal races which 
people the air, and the earth, and the waters of the sea, 
there appears to be no room for doubt — their perpetual^ 
hum, and chirp, and song, and gambol, and feeding, are 
themselves the tokens of enjoyment. The vegetable 
creatures are not commonly supposed to have any such 
capacity, and the physiologists add, as a reason, that 
they have no nerve or nervous center to make them 
conscious of joy. But the argument is good, if at all, 
only as regards the consciousness of joy, not as regards 
the joy itself. The little child is a jo3^ous being, tin- 



292 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

gling even witli joy, we may say, as witli fullness of 
life; but he is not conscious to himself of his joj. 
Health itself is joy, and yet it is a kind of joy so nearly 
unconscious, that one of our best writers lays it down 
as a maxim, that no man is in perfect health who even 
knows that he is well. Indeed there is strong reason 
to believe that life itself, clear of all hindrance and dis- 
ease, is an essentially joyous power, though of course 
unconscious. Besides, applying all this to the account 
of vegetable life, there are a good many plants that are 
called sensitive, because they give tokens of sensation, 
and others that keep up a constant oscillating, or vi- 
brating motion. And yet again what human sensi- 
bility can resist the impression, beholding the fresh 
greening of the landscapes, the bright, gay pencilings 
of the flowers, and visited by the odors they distill in 
their lives, that they are creatures, all, essentially joy- 
ous; fair as in the form, fragrant as in the exhalation, 
of joy. Hence the profound sympathy we have with 
their beauty — they give us joy, as being in the sense of 
their feeling. 

What a computation have we then of joy in the lives 
of the world. The navigator, for example, sails 
through a red brown sea, even for a week, and this 
colored element gets its dye, as he may learn, from a 
reddish insect tenanting such regions of space, at the 
rate of piobably a hundred millions to the cubic foot. 
The coral islands and reefs, extending in the sea for 
thousands of miles, are only vast cities of life, built up 
in the water, forts compared with which the Sumpters 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 293 



and all others built by man are only pebbles. Tlie 
very earth, too, as Ehrenberg discovered, is in whole 
provinces of the world, composed of little flint shells. 
These shells were before supposed to be only grains of 
sand, but he found them to be tenanted by lives, which 
are still going on at their work of sand-making as busy 
as ever. Then in the vegetable growths by which the 
world itself is carpeted and studded with forest shades, 
every plant, every spear of grass, every hair of mold, is 
a life, and the air even of the planet is scented with 
their breath. The seeds of life, such as those for ex- 
ample of the mold, are flying everywhere in it, invisi- 
ble, so that every darkest cave or cavern is a city more 
popuious even than London or Thebes, and waiting 
only for the fit occasion to spring into natural activity. 
Now this boundless wave of Life that covers the 
world, we have little room to doubt, is in some high 
sense a wave of joy. We look upon the creatures of 
life as they breathe, and feed, and grow, as they climb, 
or leap, or fly, or sing, and take them all together as 
the children, conscious or unconscious, in either case, 
the happy children, of Him who hath Life in Himself, 
and runs out the pulses of His joy to throb in them all. 
The green carpeted earth, the air scented by their odors, 
the very sky filled with their gambols and the ring of 
their music, — these are their carnival. A stately joy 
waves in the giant wood. The ebbing and flowing sea 
pants with the joys of life that are heaving in its 
depths. Even the sands of the old continents tingle 
with the touch of joy. 

. 25* 



294 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

Having now gone over the field prescribed, it only 
remains to speak, as briefly as possible, of the ends or 
objects for wliich the subject has been undertaken. 
, In asserting the immaterial quality of lives, I, of 
course, do not assert any thing positive, or any thing to 
hang a conclusion upon, respecting .any thing else, I 
only mean that they are un-material, as regards all the 
known properties and laws of matter. But if we add 
to this the fact of their self-active natu.re and their 
power to subordinate, on a large scale, the chemical 
and mechanical forces to their sovereignty, we bring 
into thought an element powerful enough to affect even 
radically the bent of the world's mind, and so to oper- 
ate important results, not only in the department of 
natural science, but also in metaphysics and the philos- 
ophy of religion, as well as in the faith and imagin- 
ative literature of the world. We need only note 
how gravity, chemical attraction, electricity, the laws 
of heat and vapor, have entered the domain of thought, 
altering even the method of speculation, to see what life 
would do, coming into full recognition, to qualify the 
prepossessions and change the modes of human opinion. 
It makes the world, in fact, another world, filling it 
with other and more quickening analogies. 

How it would affect physiology, in all its branches, 
has been obvious in the general course of these illustra- 
tions. Indeed, if some physicians were to only get 
hold of the true idea of life as a power distinct from 
the laws of inorganic matter, they would be as much 
less likely to make inorganic matter of their patients. 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 295 



And the supposed science of phrenology, conceiving 
life as a power organizing and conserving the bodies it 
inhabits, would begin to suspect that, not the head 
only, but the whole body, down to the very foot and 
heel, expresses the volume and spirit and quality of 
the man. Conceiving it too as a self-active power, 
having causations of its own upon the body, more than 
the body reactions npon it, the boasted science would 
begin to look out some place or possibility for a will, 
free will, better than to represent all human actions as 
the resultants of compound forces in the brain, or de- 
coctions of some forty brain-vessels simmering out a 
joint product. The greatest fact of humanity, the in- 
nate sense of responsibility, would possibly get some 
room thus in the science and some right to exist, better 
than it has in the apothecaries' kettles and crucibles. 

In the same way a great theologian, like Jonathan 
Edwards, writing a treatise on the will, might be able, 
under ike analogies of the self-active, originally causa- 
tive powers of life, to make a little more adequate ac- 
count of it, than he does under the analogies of weights 
and scale-beams. His magnificent puzzle might never 
have been contrived ; but the chances of human respon- 
sibility might have been as much greater in the world, 
as the chances of this kind of sophistry were less. It 
has been the great misery of theology, in fact, that it 
has always been trying to solve the relations of God 
and man as relations of cause and effect, not perceiving 
that, while this might be a very good way of accounting 
for the changes of a dead body, it never is for the 



296 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

clianges of a living body, least of all for the actions of a 
living, choosing man. The school of Scotch metaphy- 
sicians and theologians, coming in with and after the 
wondrous revelations of chemical analysis, were still 
farther diverted firom the right modes of inquiry, by 
the analogies of the chemical method. They could 
think of nothing but analysis : to raise distinctions, to 
divide, to atomize the soul by distinctions, was now to 
be the better way of knowledge. And the result of 
their better method was just what it must be ; for it is 
the grand distinction of a soul, as of all life, that it 
makes, not a summation of parts like a rock, but a 
whole, in which all the parts condition each the others, 
in such a sense that one can not be without the others. 
Their analvsis therefore was a kind of analvtic murder, 
and the man it showed was a dead, dissected, man, not 
a living. It gave us for the real Caesar the ashes of 
Caesar's urn ; or better still it gave us a manikin for a 
man. The refinements were disappointments, and the 
new knowledge opened was a waste of sands. The 
same atomizing method, passing into theology, made a 
like dry waste of that. It reduced the man to pieces 
and the truth to pieces, contriving then to show how 
the pieces of the truth act on those of the man, and 
how the pieces of the man act on those of the truth ; 
how the causes produce effects, and the hea^-ier weights 
preponderate, and which is before and which is after — 
in which it fell out, as it must that the man died of his 
treatment, and the truth died also, and the operations 
of both were nowhere. It will be impossible for any 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 297 

metaphysical, or religious tliinker, to stay in this desert 
long, after he has once got insight of the lives, and 
drawn himself to their sympathy. Passing into broth- 
erhood with these, a finer and wholly different class of 
influences will be upon him. Trying no more to think 
the soul by its parts, under laws of causation, he will 
think it as a whole, a self-active, glorious, living whole, 
recognizing its deep mystery, interpreting it by its 
wants and feelings and responsible choices, swayed by 
reasons and not by forces, akin by its nature to all 
truth and beauty and God, perfectible only in a perfect 
liberty. 

Under this kind of method, or influence, the ten- 
dency to all sorts of radicalism and religious unbelief 
will be removed; for all these varieties of mischief 
come of the endeavor to solve, by the laws of inorganic 
matter, subjects that are not inorganic matter, but dif- 
ferent as possible from it. 

The civil state, for example, what is it, as many 
reason, but an after-thought and artificial contrivance 
of mankind, — a contract, or compact, in which the 
members, in a computa.tion of advantage, agree to sur- 
render some of their individual rights, and accept the 
will of the majority, so far, as law! This, therefore, is 
the fundamental conception of liberty and all rightful 
government. No, far from that as possible ; the whole 
scheme is a string of misconceptions. Individuals had 
never any civil functions to surrender. Majorities had 
never any natural right of authority. The true concep- 
tion is that civil society is a gens^ or nation^ under the 



298 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

analogies of growth ; a form of nascent order, having, 
under God, its own historic life, by which, as a nisus 
formativus^ it will be conserved and governed. This, 
too, is its constitution; and it makes no difference 
whether it is written, or unwritten ; for if it be written, 
it is only a transcript of the regulative instincts and 
elements previously developed by its life and history. 
It may be hereditary, or elective, parliamentary, or im- 
perial ; it has a divine right in one form as truly as in 
another, if only it rules historically, and not mechani- 
cally. It is like the coral banks of the sea, which are 
representations, at once, of vital freedom and historic 
life. And as the coral insects make no complaint, 
when finding how their personal liberty is taken 
away by the framework of their rocky casement, or 
constitution, but rather feel that if they were thrust 
out of it to live, each one by itself, in the open 
sea, they would lose both their liberties and their 
bodies, so it may as well be with man, under the frame 
of civil order constructed by the organic life of their 
history — protected, thus, and made more free, instead 
of surrendering half their natural liberties to save the 
remainder, as some of our crude, atomizing theories of 
social compact are wont to assume. 

And so again of reforms. They contemplate the fact 
that organic society is somehow diseased. If then a 
body grows a rheum, or a carbuncle, does the physician 
hew it to pieces and get up another, or does he make 
applications, and administer alteratives, apj^ealing to 
the life it still has, and contriving, in that manner, to 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 299 

work the desired amendment? So, then, if the rights 
of labor fare badly, under the selfish and diseased ac- 
tion of society and capital, that radicalism which pro- 
poses to crush out society and build up a new civil or- 
der, trusting nothing to the mitigations of law, and the 
infusions of social justice, or Christian brotherhood, is a 
wisdom that works in the molds only of force and me- 
chanical repair, not in those conservative methods that 
belong to the vis medicatrix of life. All such radicals 
get their logic from the laws of inorganic matter ; and 
falling to work at society, as if it were dead, they take 
the surest means to make it so. 

But we pass to the matter of religious unbelief, and 
the immense difierence it makes, in all the tendencies 
of religious opinion, whether it is tempered by the 
analogies of life, or wholly dominated by the modes of 
inorganic matter. Taking matter and its laws for na- 
ture, and asserting the absolute uniformity of cause and 
effect under these laws, Christianity is no longer credi- 
ble ; there is no place left for miracle, or for any suj)er- 
natural visitation of God. But when the lives are dis- 
covered as beings that are, in no sense, properties of 
matter ; when we see them proved by their effects to 
be profoundly real — real as gravity and not a whit 
more mysterious as regards their substantial nature — 
when we see inertia, heat, chemical aflBinity, gravity it- 
self, all the laws of dead matter submitted, on a large 
scale, to their sovereignty, we are set in a mood that is 
wholly different. We are ready to believe in forces 
outside of matter and superior to it, for indeed we do 



300 LIFE, OR THE LIVES 



already. There is thus a kind of spirit-world to us in 
nature itself, preparing, as it were, beginnings of faith, 
bj the sublime mastery it wields. The transition to a 
faith in supernatural beings and events is thus made 
easy. For, if the vegetable lives can sway the mineral 
properties, if the animal can sway the vegetable, if the 
intelligent personal minds can master both, then how 
far from being incredible is it, that a being, coming into 
the world from without and above, can make all things 
bend to his diviner will and sovereignty, and yet in 
such a way as to involve no subversion of order. 

In this manner, too, we are prepared to a steadier 
and more confident opinion of the immortality of souls. 
How real the soul-powers are in their self-activity we 
have seen by worlds-full of examples — real enough in 
their humblest, tiniest, forms, to do what all the chem- 
ists can not, aided by all the known powers of matter 
and its laws. 

Is it then assumed that what we call the soul in man 
is really one and the same with his life principle ? It 
has been common to raise a distinction between the 
body-soul or life, and the spirit-soul, and there certainly 
is a distinction of functional activity correspondent 
with these terms ; a distinction which, indeed, appears 
in the scriptures. But the distinction referred to may 
be regarded as pertaining to one and the same sub- 
stance, or as requiring two different substances. On 
this point Baxter and other Christian teachers of 
different schools have not been forward to decide. I 
will only suggest that multiplying substances and 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 301 

causes where tliere is no need of it, is iinpliilosopliicaL 
And tliere is the less reason for it here, that the lives 
of the world appear in so many grades. First we have 
the unconscious, next the conscious, then the voluntary 
and locomotive, then the half-intelligent and contriving, 
then the responsible and free ; so that if we make a sep- 
ation of soul and spirit, as being distinct substances, we 
shall certainly be found to include under spirit some 
things, at least, which belong to mere animate natures 
under their life principle. On the whole, it seems 
better to regard the body-soul or life, in man, as being- 
one and the same substance as the spirit or religious 
principle; only having lower functions, by which it 
lays hold of matter, fashioning a body, and functions 
more transcendent, by which it knows and appropriates 
God. 

But the Lives all die, why not then the soul-principle 
of man, which we are agreeing to regard as being one 
and the same as his life ? 

To this I answer, in the first place, that the reality 
of the soul is, in this view, greatly augmented. It is 
no longer any ghostly affair, which may or may not be, 
but it is the very power that organizes and conserves 
the body, real as the body, whose growths and palpita- 
tions even are operated by it. 

Then, as regards the evidence of immortalitj^, a wide 
distinction is made between it and all other of the lives, 
that they are only servitors to it, existing plainly for 
its sake, and not for their own. They take the world 
as a world of mere mineral substance on which man 

26 



302 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

could not live, and have it given them as their office, 
to prepare and furnish it for his use. They carpet and 
color the landscapes for his eye ; they decompose the 
corrupted atmosphere, and give him the liberated oxy- 
gen for his br^thing. They fall to composing new 
substances for his uses and trades; spinning the fibres 
of flax, cotton, silk, and wool for his clothing ; growing 
forests for his fuels and timbers; composing gums, 
spices, fruits, grains, meats, and medicines, for his food 
and healing ; building stout, powerful bodies, and swift 
also, for his carriers and couriers; and, what is spe- 
cially significant, doing nothing for themselves, and all 
for him, as the lord-life, owner, planter, propagator 
of them all. And so the mineral earth, on which he 
would otherwise die, is prepared to a state of habitable 
order, and bounty, and beautjr, for his uses^ — not for the 
uses of his body only but quite as much of his mind ; 
for he could not even have a language based on min- 
eral roots alone, that would express his sentiments and 
the feelings and workings of his heart as a creature of 
religion. How little then does it signify, as regards 
the question of his immortality, that these inferior lives 
are mortal, when he, as a life, holds an order so visibly 
transcendent? As little does it signify that he dies 
himself, as respects his connection with a body, for we 
can see for ourselves, that the soul-force of his nature 
gathers volume and majesty, long after the body has 
culminated ; giving, in that fact, the sign that what we 
call his death is but the leave-taking and final gradua- 
tion of his immortality. 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 303 

Besides, we have, in the instinctive working of these 
lower lives, the strongest of all external arguments for 
the immortality of man. Thus we have seen that roots 
which love the water have a kind of instinctive percep- 
tion, which turns them, even at whole rods of distance, 
to run in that direction; also that the humble straw- 
berry goes after the good earth near it, by a similar in- 
stinct of life ; both measuring, in a sense, the reach of 
their own faculty, and starting, or withholding, as they 
find themselves able, or not, to succeed. But of all 
these inferior lives there is not one that reaches after 
permanence, or gives any, the faintest, token that it 
measures itself, or its aims and aspirations, by immuta- 
ble ideas. This belongs to man alone. In his con- 
science he feels the touch of immutable right ; by his 
reason he is made akin to geometry, number, time, 
space, cause, and all necessary ideas ; his will is an au- 
tocratic force, superior to all conditions; his deepest 
wants of feeling and desire, are the hunger of his nature 
reaching after God, as the only sufficient food, the un- 
changing good and beauty of the world — all the cur- 
rents of his life pour on after eternity, as the rivers seek 
the sea! What then shall we conclude, but that, 
measured by the reach of his instincts, he is himself an 
eternal creature? Or, if the blind root can, by some 
wondrous method, discern the water through many feet 
of earth, how shall it surprise us, that the sublimer 
faith -instinct of man, can truly see those immortal 
waters, towards which the roots of his being do so man- 
ifestly run. 



304 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 

And then, beside all this, to shorten the argument 
down to its true point, every human soul is conscious 
of its immortality, knows it by an immediate knowl- 
edge, takes the permanent by its own inborn affinities, 
never lets go of it or loses out the fixed evidence of 
conviction, till it has blurred itself by the sottishness, or 
beguiled itself by the sophistries of sin. 

One thinor more remains to be susforested; viz.. the 
immense contribution that is made, both to relisrion, 
and the higher wants of genius, by the due understand- 
ing of lives. There is no such culture as this for the 
imagination ; for it is a kind of culture that disposes at 
once to faith, and to all purest exaltations of feeling arfd 
fancy. There is, I know, a contrary prejudice. In- 
deed, I have heard an American scholar turning that 
prejudice into an oration, in which he said, for sub- 
stance — *' why should the poor child's mind be drugged 
with facts and curiosities of science ? Let him hear 
the stories of elfs, sprites, fairies, goblins, and good fel- 
lows; let him read, for true history, if he will, the 
Arabian tales and weave them into his dreams ; teach 
him faith in this manner, and quicken his poetic 
fancy ; but above all do not begin with your primers 
of natural history and bring him up among the beasts." 
Now that a conceited, unbelieving, and therefore un- 
beautiful, soul, will be fashioned by the habit of ac- 
counting for all things, by the laws and calculable 
forces of dead matter, I most certainly agree. But the 
wisdom of the proposed remedy is not so obvious. The 
soul of a child thus fed on ^^gorgons and chimeras 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 805 

dire " will be only a den of superstition if he believes 
them, or if he finally outgrows the opinion of their re- 
ality, they will only have done what was possible to 
make him a skeptic and Sadducee. The truth is that 
all hot-bed measures to force the imagination will only 
grow a green-house plant, that can not even live in the 
outdoor winds, and under the fires of the sun. The 
imagination is no genuine power, save when it is the 
flaming out in thought of fires that must be so vented, 
and would otherwise suffocate in the soul. Faith, too, 
is the sister of beauty, and the only real poetry is truth. 
Vain study is it, therefore, this endeavor to give wings 
to a soul, when it has not gotten life enough, in its 
thought, to want them. Let it be enough to educate 
the eye, and sharpen the appetite for a keen observa- 
tion — unfolding all the other powers, meantime, by a 
downright, solid, matter-of-fact training. And then as 
the soul gets force enough to grapple with the internal 
meanings and mysteries of things, let it look in here 
upon the lives, for these will do more to vitalize 
thought and give it wings, than all the mythologic fic- 
tions of the world. Here it will be entered into a realm 
of spirit-creatures, more delicate than fays and fairies, 
with the advantage that they are real — real enough to 
play their tricks, at will, on the stupid matter and its 
laws. These fantastic immaterialities it will find 
swarming in all grades and dimensions, between micro- 
scopic motes, and the giants of the forest and the levia- 
thans of the sea, reducing all substances between the 
stubborn flint and the fluid air, and working out their 

26-^ 



306 LIFE, OR THE LIVES 



magic spells, in ceaseless transformations that exceed 
even the fables of romantic story. Nature ceases, in 
this manner, to be a mere sand-bottom or platform of 
rock and becomes a circle of joyous life — a perpetual 
Midsummer's Mght Dream, without either dream or 
fiction in it. And these mute, unreasoning artists, 
fellow in a sense to mind, come into its feeling and 
marry it to nature, by such delicate ties of sympathy 
and brotherhood, as quicken it to insight, exalting, at 
once, the philosophical understanding, and refining the 
poetic life. 

Things above sense, the reverend mysteries of God 
and religion, now throng about the man, firing his im- 
agination and challenging a ready faith. Having 
passed within the rind of matter, and by its mechanical 
laws, and discovered, there, a more potent, multitudin- 
ous, self-active, world of life, his higher affinities are 
wakened, drawing him away to the common Father, 
whose life is in him, as in them, and to those meditations 
of the future otherwise faint and dim in their evidence. 
Of if, perchance, he remembers that all these creatures 
die and are no more, a feeling is by this time generated, 
which can no more be chilled, of his own self- asserting 
immortality. So that when the autumnal frosts have 
changed the world's green look, and the pale nations of 
the forest leaves, hang withering, or fly their stems, 
loosened by the windy blasts, he will call them with 
the poet — ^'pestilence stricken multitudes," and the 
sympathy yielded to the drooping spirits of creation 
will only have softened his own,- preparing that gentle- 



LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 807 

ness in him which belongs both to faith and to genius. 
But the courage of his immortality stays firm, for well 
he knows, that when the green myrmidons of spring 
appear, to gladden again the earth, it will be to him as 
the opening of the gate ^'Beautiful" over all graves, 
and that, being now a life again among the lives of 
May, singing with them that sing, and rejoicing in the 
new-born joy of all, it will only be his impulse to say, 
what before he believed, — ''The resurrection and the 
Life." 



VIII. 

CITY PLANS * 



The topic assigned me, this evening, is the Planning 
of Cities. You will understand, of course, that I am 
not required, in the handling of my topic, to make out 
the plan of any particular city, or to model a general 
plan for all cities. There is no absolute plan for cities, 
and no city can be well planned, as the duplicate of 
another. Moreover it is seldom that any, except some 
paper city of speculation, is planned wholly beforehand. 
A very few have been, but, commonly, beginnings are 
made first, which grow into some more definite and 
more extended plan afterwards. And yet the begin- 
nings made and the growths or extensions that come 
after, would commonly be very different, if only there 
could be on hand a little better culture, in regard to the 
ideas and principles involved in the best and most taste- 
ful arrangement of cities. 

And here, exactly, is the object of our present in- 
quiry ; it is to set on, or promote, this kind of culture — 

* Prepared for tlie Public Improvement Society of Hartford, but for 
reasons of health postponed and not delivered. 



CITY PLANS. 309 

to unfold the regulative ideas of the subject, to contrib- 
ute suggestions, state the ends and objects to be sought, 
sharpen the attention of criticism, and bring out, as far 
as possible, the laws of construction by which the com- 
pletest and most attractive city may be built. And the 
importance of a well-formed power of criticism, in this 
field, is much greater than many will, at once, perceive. 

Thus if some of you should ask what considerable 
interest vou can have, as citizens of an old established 
city or town, in such a subject as this, I answer that it 
is a matter of some consequence, or ought to be, that 
you should have impressions not absurd of your own 
city itself — its defects, advantages, and capabilities — ^for 
if it should happen that you live your time out here, 
complaining all your life-long of the best points in it, 
deploring to your last day the impossibility of remov- 
ing just the things which are its finest merits ; working, 
it may be, in the city council, to roll up bills of expense 
for alterations that were really better not to be made ; 
and finally dying a little before your time, because the 
city plan will not square itself to your false notions of 
taste and order ; it would seem that a more cultivated 
taste and a juster view of the subject and the laws by 
which it is governed were, at least, desirable. I will 
further add that exactly what I speak of here is a 
matter of common occurrence, and I could name at least 
a dozen points in the arrangement of our city, about 
which serious regret is even commonly expressed, 
which are yet, in reality, among the best points in it. 

Furthermore, the impressions you make of yourselves, 



310 CITY PLANS. 

by the crudity, or sound maturity of your judgments 
in tliis particular matter, would seem to have a consid- 
erable degree of consequence. Thus, if you were 
called, some time, to show the city to a stranger of dis- 
tinction, in a ride about its localities, and he should 
find you pleased most often with what is a most certain 
deformity, and most ready to deplore what a little more 
culture would as certainly help you to approve, it will 
not be enough that you are unconscious of the rather 
weak and ludicrous figure you make. It may be that 
3'ou do not know it, when he pities your crudity, or 
smiles at your expense ; still it is none the less true that 
he would think of you with more respect, if he could 
respect your opinions. 

Some of 3'ou too will be traveling in foreign cities, 
and all of you in other cities of your own country, and 
it will be -much to you that you carry with you tastes 
and ideals of art, so far matured as to enable you to en- 
joy what is really picturesque, or finely conceived ; or, 
if you must reject any thing as absurd, will allow you 
to do it with a rational confidence in your judgments. 

Besides, how many of you, after all, according to the 
common lot of Americans, will yet be sometime con- 
cerned in the shaping, extending, or founding of 
new cities. The very slender qualifications too that, 
for want of better and more competent, have heretofore 
been called to preside over this most critical work, in 
the newer portions of our country, and the thousand 
miserable abortions generated in consequence, to be 
the perpetual grief and torment of posterity, make it 



CITY PLANS. 311 

even a kind of public duty for every American to put 
himself in training, in at least some partial degree, by 
a meditation of the points to be gained and the laws to 
be observed in the skillful and wise planting of such 
new foundations. We admit the importance of a good 
plan for hotises, and even fences and barns ; for schools, 
and churches, and fortifications, and constitutions ; and 
also that all such plans require much thought and per- 
sonal culture; but cities are the most incorrigible in 
their faults, as they are most immovable in their loca- 
tion and most nearly everlasting in their continuance, 
of all human creations, and therefore require to be 
never thrown upon a hap-hazard beginning, never to 
be extemporized in a crude, wild way, but always to be 
shaped by the wisest consideration rather, and the 
wisest understanding both of possibilities and princi- 
ples. The importance, in fact, of this kind of culture 
will never be underrated, by one who has taken the 
very sad lesson of a journey among our new cities of 
the west; where possibilities neglected, and principles 
defied, are so often put in eternal and eternally mortify- 
ing evidence, by the awkward, misbegotten, contriv- 
ances that have taken hold of the fee simple of nature, 
and become the torment of its beauty for all coming 
time. Further I think we need not go, to find the im- 
mense practical significance of the subject I am now 
called to discuss. 

Before we undertake the more specific matters in- 
cluded in the combinations of cities, I think it will help 



312 CITY PLANS. 

US greatly, to raise a previous question, viz., what are 
the requisites of a good city plan? for the points we 
may bring up, in a canvassing of this question, will go 
far, it may be, to determine other questions of a less 
general nature, which, without some considerations pre- 
viously brought into view, it would even be difficult to 
settle at all. I answer then the question proposed, 
what are the requisites of a good city plan, by saying — 
1. That it must make a city and not something else. 
This may seem, at first view, to be a mere truism, not 
having any very important significance ; but you will 
find, as you set your mind upon it more carefully, that 
it signifies much. The radical idea of a city appears in 
the old proverb — ^'God made the country and man 
made the town." A city then is man's world, a little 
world of life that he has built for himself; and accord- 
ingly it is to be perfected principally as a thing within 
itself. Thus, for example, it is no great point that it 
should be located so as to be a conspicuous object from 
a distance, no great point that it should have a com- 
manding outlook over the open countr3^ If there 
should happen to be some prominent cliff or acropolis 
which appears distinctly out at sea, or commands a fine 
view of the adjacent country, it is well — much better 
than it is in a cemetery or city of the dead ; for there 
the fine outlook, or distant prospect, is even a fault to 
be complained of; and when a granite tower is built to 
repair the imagined want of a prospect, as in one of our 
most noted cemeteries, what is it but a wretched offense 
to genuine sentiment, and a vulgarity that should even 



CITY PLANS. 313 

be the subject of public mortification? In a city of the 
living, the conditions of boundary and self-limitation are 
less stringent. Where there is a point of conspicuity it 
may be taken, or taken advantage of; but if it should 
appear that the city was originally set upon the rounded 
summit of a hill for the mere sake of conspicuity, that 
simple fact would forever destroy the sense of a city 
character. It is a matter of far greater consequence 
that the parts of a city should look into one another, as 
when they look across a valley, than that they should 
have distant prospects looking away from one another 
into the country. There wants to be something in a 
city that produces a sense of its being a world in itself, 
and this is part of the charm felt in the old walled 
cities of Europe. There is a sense in such cases of 
being gathered into city life, or a life in man's world, 
that associates the feeling of art and community, and is 
therefore only agreeable. 

You may test this matter by supposing a city built 
on a vast plain, having the streets so laid that you may 
look straight through, in every direction, into the 
country and the green fields. We have only to con- 
ceive such an arrangement, to convince ourselves, at 
once, of the painful vacuity and the insupportable 
weariness it will inflict. There is no reactive object for 
the eye, no sense of limit or boundary, no gathering 
into city life. The row^s of houses and streets are like 
the rows of corn in an unfenced field on the prairies, 
and are scarcely more effective in the sense they beget of 
a man-world state. 

27 



314 



CITY PLANS. 



On the same general principle, that a city is to be a 
city, and not a something to look from, or look at, the 
study should be, in locating a public building, or any 
public ornament, such as a statue, or an obelisk, that it 
is to be so placed as will show it best within ; that is, to 
the greatest number of eyes and from the greatest num- 
ber of avenues or streets. If a lighthouse is to be 
built, it must doubtless be set to look out upon the sea ; 
if a monument, a pillar, a commemoration tower, let it 
stand a mark for all eyes, if possible, within the city 
lines. The city, in short, will be most perfectly 
planned, other things being equal, when it makes a 
world for itself and reveals its ornaments most effectu- 
ally to itself. Like the inside of a house, it is to be 
planned for inside show, completeness and beanty. It 
may also be given as a requisite — 

2. Of a good city plan, that it shall always unite, 
if possible, something historical. There needs, in or- 
der to the most pleasing and picturesque effect, to be an 
impression produced of growth, or extension. There 
should be an old-looking part, and a new-looking ; an 
irregular, perhaps, and a regular. As a house will be 
most pleasing when it looks as if it grew up with the 
family, by successive enlargements and room by room, 
as other rooms were wanted, not when it appears to 
have been, at the first, a complete and forever inexten- 
sible formality — a pagoda, an octagon, or a Greek 
temple, waiting for any body, or every body, or no- 
body, and the same to all — so a city will be most 
pleasing when the histor}' is told by the plan. If such 



CITY PLANS. 315 

a city for example as Philadelpliia were to be extended 
by additional squares, till it was as large as Babylon, 
there would be no history in it. ISTew York, on the 
other hand, shows, in the contrast of old and irregular 
parts with the new, some traces of having had a history. 
The small city of New Haven too reveals a token of 
history which is really the very best point of the plan, 
though deplored, I have no doubt, every day of the 
year, by the majority of the citizens, as a defect that 
can never be repaired — I speak of the fact that all the 
outer portion of the city, which is much the larger por- 
tion, is seen to have virtually planned itself At the 
original planting, there were laid out a few blocks, or 
squares, composing what is now the core of the town, 
and was considered, at the time, to be the whole town 
of the future. Into this core of square- work came the 
public roads, each in its own natural line of direction, 
meeting it sometimes at the sides, oftener at the angles ; 
and then, afterwards, the city spread itself out upon 
these roads, divergently related to each other ; and so it 
resulted that no single street goes out of the city in a 
line parallel to the block- work lines of the center ; sec- 
ondly, that no one standing in the streets of the block- 
work center can look completely through into the open 
countr}^; and thirdly, that a story is written in the 
very lines of the streets, which saves the town from the 
eternal monotony of its levels, and of its otherwise reg- 
ular form. In the same manner, the boulevards of 
Paris are history, representing, for all future time, to the 
eye, the spaces covered by the ancient walls and fortifi- 



316 CITY PLANS. 

cations, now cleared awa}^, and recalling tlie day when 
Paris was only a small fortified town. Frankfort on 
the Maine is an illustration still more to the purpose. 
It stands on a river, occupying a plain surface, much 
like Philadelphia. In the nucleus or core, is the an- 
cient town, the part that used to be contained within 
the walls. There, as the plan was to get as many people 
as possible into as little circuit as possible, in order to 
make the defense more easy, the structures are crowded, 
rear upon rear, and the blocks are cut up in all manner 
of zigzag lines, wherever a building can find room, and 
the streets themselves are often contracted so that a man 
may touch both sides with his hands. No space of 
open ground is any where left, save in w^hat is called 
the market-place — a paved acre, so to sj)eak, where the 
vegetables and meats might be offered for the provision- 
ing of the fortress otherwise called the cit}^ But the 
day of gunpowder, cannon-balls and bombs arrives, and, 
behold, the walls are worthless! Accordingly a new 
modern figure begins in the clearing away of the walls 
much as in New Haven, only for a different reason 
The wall and fortification circle becomes a public gar 
den, threaded by mazy walks among shades and flow 
ers ; and then, outside of this, round the whole circuit 
there spreads a new modern city, with broad, straight 
avenues and ample house-lots, fronted with trees, in the 
manner of a new American city. And so the modern 
Frankfort is old Frankfort converted into history. The 
people walk about in a history. It stands before their 
eyes, it touches their feet, they do their business, locate 



CITY PLAXS. 317 

their houses, take their title-deeds and feel the winds 
themselves in the lines of old historic record. 

As then a city ought, if possible, to be in some way 
historic, it should not be planned in any such absolute, 
complete form, that the future lines will be determined 
by those laid down. If the people of New Haven had 
passed an order that all the roads coming into the town 
should coincide in direction with the streets in it, they 
would have very nearly ruined their present city, 
which is, on the whole, one of the best planned cities 
in the country. Something must be left to the liberty 
of the future, to produce that air of growth and historic 
life which is necessary to a really fine city. It is not 
enouo-h that there should be somethino- informal, or ir- 
regular in the plan.; that will not produce the historic 
air we speak of, when it still appears to be an irregu- 
larity originally planned. No city is less historic in its 
air than the city of "Washington, because it is so mani- 
festly set down at the first to be just what it is. In 
this point of view it is the worst planned city in the 
world; for, if it were to exist a thousand years, it 
would still wear the look of studv and never the look 
of growth. If it were a simple block- work or chess- 
board plan, it might possibly be a more natural exten- 
sion of some plan originally small, but the studied, 
foredoomed, regular, irregularity of Washington, never 
can appear to be any thing but an artificial and formal 
appointment, with which history and growth have had 
as little to do, as with a diagram of Euclid. Hence, 
notwithstanding some good points in the plan, there 

27- 



318 CITY PLAXS. 

must be an eternal dryness and constraint in it. No 
plan can be agreeable that excludes the sense of history, 
or wins the fact of antiquity, without any such tokens 
of the times and changes gone by, as may notch the 
stages of progress and make the antiquity visible. 

3. A city must be so arranged, if it can be, as to an- 
swer the conditions of health. No city over which the 
pale angels of sickness are always hovering becomes or- 
namental or attractive. Heavy bills of mortality keep 
down the tonic enerofv of art. Not even the best com- 
mercial advantages brace the feeling up to improvement. 
Thrift itself takes on a scarcely thrifty look, because the 
men most forward in it are always finding how to with- 
draw and get a chance to live. Even the stone of ar- 
chitecture looks weak in its lines, and statuary droops 
in expression, where a funeral miasma loads the atmos- 
phere. The mere repute of unhealthiness is a heavy 
bar of disadvantage, as regards any kind of progress 
and culture. 

And yet a city must sometimes be located where the 
natural conditions are less favorable to health than 
would be desirable, because the trade, which is to be 
its life, can not be accommodated with a better site. 
There was probably no better choice for New Orleans 
than the choice that was made. If there was no other 
river mouth, or harbor, at the south end of Lake Mich- 
io-an, Chicao:o was obliored to settle into the vast mud- 
plain it occupies, just above the surface of the water, 
and contrive to get the necessary drainage for a great 
city in what manner it best could. Still a great deal 



CITY PLANS. 319 

can be done for the liealtliiness of almost any location, 
if only the city plan is rightly adjusted and the true 
sanitary conditions are duly attended to afterwards. 

Thus it is one of the first and most important mat- 
ters in adjusting the plan of a city, to prepare a suffi- 
cient drainage or sewerage. And if the ground is too 
low, or too flat, to allow a sufficient drainage by grav- 
ity, the plan must be arranged so as to favor an arti- 
ficial and forced drainage, discharging at a point under 
water, and remote from the shore. More commonly 
there will be a sufficient natural drainage, if only it is 
taken due advantage of in the grade and location of 
streets. There will be some low sfround, or natural de- 
pression of surface, such that, if some avenue is laid 
along the depression, conforming, in a degree, to its 
sinuosities, there will be no difficulty in carrying off*, by 
a main sewer under it, all that is brought down by a 
multitude of side sewers into the main which nature 
has provided for. Whereas, if everything is sacrificed 
to regularity of lines and gradings, and the low grounds 
are fiUed up to even the grade across them, there will 
be, as there ought to be, no drainage left. Too great 
attention can not be given in the adjustment of a city 
plan to the easy and natural drainage of the parts. 

It is also a great question, as respects the health of a 
city, in what direction, or according to what points of 
the compass, the streets are to be laid. To most persons 
it will appear to be a kind of law, that the city shall 
.stand square with the cardinal points of the compass — 
north and south, east and west. And where this law 



320 CITY PLANS. 

appears to have not been regarded, how many will de- 
plore so great an oversight, and even have it as the 
standing regret of their criticism. Whereas, in the true 
economy of health and comfort, no single house, or 
cit}', should ever stand thus, squared by the four cardi- 
nal points, if it can be avoided. On the contrary, it 
should have its lines of frontage northeast and south- 
west, northwest and southeast, where such a disposition 
can be made without injury in some other respect; 
that so the sun may strike every side of exposure every 
day in the year, to dry it when wet by storms, to keep 
off the mold and moss that are likely to collect on it, 
and remove the dank sepulchral smell that so often 
makes the tenements of cities both uncomfortable and 
poisonous to health. 

Eegard should also be had in the laying of streets to 
their ventilation ; that is, to the courses of the winds in 
the warmer and less healthy seasons of the year. Thus, 
in our particular climate, the coolest breeze of the sum- 
mer and the softest of the winter is the sea-breeze, which 
comes directly from the south. The wind therefore 
requires exactly the same quartering of the streets that 
is required by the sun ; for, in streets that run directly 
east and west, at right-angles to the course of the wind, 
the tenements will scarcely feel it on their south side, 
because the tenements opposite will keep it off, and will 
much less feel it on their north side, because they keep 
it off themselves. Meantime, on the streets that run 
directly north and south in the line of the wind itself, 
it will only brush the surfaces on either side, and will 



CITY PLANS. 321 

scarcely press into the windows at all. Whereas, if the 
streets were laid diagonally in relation to the breeze, 
that is, in our particular case, northeast and southwest, 
and southeast and northwest, the current would press 
into all the streets and into and through all the houses 
open to its passage, making eddies and whirls at every 
crossing, and fanning, as it were, by its breath, the 
whole city. In a different case, where the prevailing 
breeze of summer requires the streets to quarter in one 
line of diagonal, and the sun in another, the conflict 
can be settled only by compromise, or b}' sacrificing 
one advantage to the other. 

4. It is another requisite in the planning of a city 
that it be so arranged as to serve the purposes of con- 
venience. Eectangnilar blocks and structures have so 
great an advantage in this respect, that squares and 
parallelograms must and will predominate in all well 
planned cities. In this rectangular form architects and 
builders are best accommodated. The rectangular plan 
also furnishes most easily, and is well nigh indispensable 
to an elegant and attractive interior. The shops of trade 
require the same. Conceding then so much, in regard 
to the better convenience of the rectangular form, it be- 
comes a problem, requiring only to be the more care- 
fully studied, how, or by what means, it may be so far 
modified as to save it from the insufferable tameness 
and stupidity of a mere gingham city, of the Babylo- 
nian, or Philadelphian type. 

Not seldom will convenience itself require a devia- 
tion, as where there is some curvilinear sweep of low 



322 - CITY PLANS. 

ground along which a principal avenue will most natu- 
rally trace itself, covering some principal sewer of drain- 
age. Sometimes there will be a steep-faced bluff, round 
the foot of which a quay, or general landing-place for 
merchandise may sweep, conforming to its lines. Some- 
times there will be round-sided hills in the background, 
rising, it may be, into rocky summits ; such as would 
command a fine outlook over the city and harbor, if 
only the ascent could be made easj' for the accommoda- 
tion of residences. To lay a covering of squares, on 
the faces of such bluffs and rounded hills, would even 
be absurd; for the ascent of their heights can be 
made only by straight lines that are very oblique and 
cut each other diamond-wise, or by a spiralling in 
curve lines that cut each other in acute ano^les. By the 
neglecting of this very ob^dous expedient, the noble 
background of the fine city of San Francisco is sacri- 
ficed and forever lost. Lying in a capacious bowl or 
concave between the hills and the bav, the citv is laid 
off, as it should be, in parallelograms, with only here 
and there a deviation from uniformity, and, as every- 
thing passing on the concave length of every street is 
visible of course in every part of it, there is a wonderful 
vivacity in the circulations. But as soon as the rect- 
angular form, pushing up the steep hill-sides, reaches a 
point where the ascent for carriages is no longer possi- 
ble, the whole space above, which ought to have been 
covered with residences of the highest character, loses 
value and is occupied only by cheap tenements, such as 
mules and footmen, climbing up as they best can, are 



CITY PLANS. 323 

able to furnish with supplies. So far the rectangular 
plan is the enemy of all convenience. Nay it is even 
the final destruction of the finest possibilities of beauty. 
Had the engineers of San Francisco, when reaching a 
certain point, deflected their straight lines, running 
them into spirals that cut each other obliquely, the 
plan which now runs out, in the background, into a 
w^eak and crazy-looking conspicuity, would have 
crowned itself in a summit of ornament ascended by 
easy drives, and looking down from its terraces on all 
the activity of a populous and beautiful city. 

By the law of convenience the width also of the 
streets will, in general, be most properly determined. 
Primarily cities are for use — only for show and beauty 
afterward — and when we consider the matter of use, it 
is obvious enough that streets may be too narrow and 
also too wide for the convenience of use. A very nar- 
row street strangles the free circulation of business, a 
very wide one never can be made to have the air of 
business. In a very large city there ought to be a few 
great arteries of motion where it may flow unobstructed 
from one side to the other ; like the great central street 
of Antioch, for example, which was four miles long and 
some two hundred feet broad, flanked, on either side, 
by a lofty colonnade or archwork of stone, which cov- 
ered the promenade walks from one end to the other. 
But the ordinary streets of cities are more agreeable 
when they are from fifty to eighty feet wide. Neither 
is it a point to be greatly insisted on, that there shall 
be a large and spacious rear provided for in the cjenter 



324 CITY PLANS. 

of a block or square ; for it spreads the business and 
the population over too large a surface, introducing 
magnificent distances where you want the sense of 
density and a crowding, rapid, all-to-do activity — which 
is one of the principal attractions of a city. Besides, 
when the population or the business begins to press for 
room in any quarter, it is sure to bui^t into the vacant 
centers and rear grounds, erecting there store-houses, 
stables, manufactories, and producing, at last, a more 
crowded state in the rear than if no such centers had 
been reserved; with the disadvantage that they are 
crowded often with unsiorhtlv and filthv nuisances, in 
place of the clean, close, rear, that would have been se- 
cured by a less roomy plan at the first. 

Thus far we have been occupied mainly with the re- 
quisites of a fine city ; considering what conditions it 
should answer, and what, in idea, it is or ought to be. 
In this inquiry we have touched incidentally a good 
many points and settled in advance many important 
questions. The next thing in order is the question of 
location, or site. 

This however is a question that is very often de- 
termined beforehand, and that not seldom by what ap- 
pears to be only an accident — a tent that was pitched 
by a spring, a landing made for the night upon the 
shore of some river or bay. A little hamlet is thus be- 
gun which insists on the right of growth, and when the 
thought of being sometime a city takes it, puts forth it- 
self in the adjustment of an embryo plan. In ancient 



CITY PLANS. 325 

times, cities were located for mere safety, or ease of de- 
fense, and not for any particular purpose of convenience 
or beauty. Some precipitous cliff of rock was taken, 
some peninsular bluff in the bend of a river, some island 
in some lake or bay. The sides most exposed, or per- 
haps all the sides, were defended by a wall and then 
the problem was to crowd as many houses and people 
as possible, into a space as contracted as possible, that 
there might be many defenders and but a small extent 
of wall to defend. The result was rather a citadel than 
a city. The people went into it as into their den, to be 
kept in close quarters, and settle the balance between 
dying under the hand of enemies outside and by pesti- 
lential infections inside, as they best could. Thus we 
have Jerusalem, Tyre, Venice, Mantua, Berne, Geneva, 
Paris, Edinburgh, and a very considerable part of the 
ancient cities — they were located as for defense and 
grew into cities afterward. 

In modern times and especially in our own new 
country, it is a remarkable distinction that we have it 
given us so often to locate a city ; and not only this, 
but that we are allowed to consult, first of all, the con- 
veniences of use and ornament. The summit of rock, 
the fastness or natural fortification which can not be 
scaled, or mined, has no longer any thing to commend 
it — gunpowder has made its defenses worthless — and 
there is nothing left us but to spread our cities out 
where we want them to be, and the freedom of trade 
requires them to be. 

And yet it is remarkable that, having all this liberty, 

28 



326 CITY PLANS. 

Ave so often locate our cities in a manner that sacrifices 
even the convenience of business and the comfort of life. 
California, for example, has founded three important 
cities or marts of trade which, considering their new- 
ness, are well built and have a generally fine appear- 
ance — San Francisco, Sacramento, and Marysville. 
The two last are even set below high water mark! 
when, at the distance of scarcely more than a mile, 
they could both have secured a fine ample high ground 
never invaded by water, and equally convenient for the 
purposes of trade — one of them as much more conven- 
ient as a perpetual access by steam navigation is better 
than a mile of transportation by land for the whole dry 
season of the year ! The first, San Francisco, is bound 
to be a successful and really grand city, but, with all 
its fine natural advantages, it unites a remarkable com- 
bination of disadvantages that might all have been 
avoided by choosing another site. Occupying now the 
north end of a narrow, jagged, dike of mountains forty 
miles long, between the bay and the sea, the chance of 
a railroad connection inland is cut off as completely as 
if it were forty miles at sea, save in one particular di- 
rection. Meantime there is no place anywhere for the 
excavation of a dock, which the high tides of that coast 
render necessary for the convenience of trade, as truly 
as the tides of Liverpool and London — all the more 
necessary that the sands drifted up the western slopes, 
in the trade- wind season, from the sea-beach two miles 
back of the city, are continually spilling down into it, 
and finding their way thus into the wharfages to shallow 



CITY PLANS. 327 

the water aud compel new extensions to serve the uses 
of shipping. The defenses of the harbor-gate are easy, 
and yet no defenses can ever make the city secure, for 
the reason that an enemy has only to make his landing 
■on the beach, two miles back of thb town, and take it 
b}^ an assault in the rear. It can- even be bombarded 
from the open sea. Now, incredible as it may seem, for 
a stranger will hardly believe it, there was, just over 
the bay, and a few miles to the north, at a little hamlet 
called San Pablo, a grand natural city plat about five 
miles square, graded handsomely down to the bay, sup- 
plied on its upper edge with the very best water break- 
ing out of a gorge in the hills, having a straight path 
out to sea for ships, among islands of rock easily de- 
fended, and a fair open sweep for railroad connections, 
north, east, and south, with gradings half prepared al- 
ready, and, behind a rocky summit on its mid-front, a 
natural dock ground two miles long, partly covered by 
the tides even now, and open to the deep water at both 
ends — in short, there was never in the world such a site 
for a magnificent commercial city. But alas ! the site 
is fixed elsewhere, by the mere chance landing of ad- 
venture, and a change is forever impossible! What 
an illustration, of the immense, or even literally un- 
speakable importance of the results that are sometimes 
pending on the right location of a city ! 

Let me not be understood as deprecating, in this 
matter of location, a just, or even supreme reference to 
considerations of business. This, to the modern city, is 
what the stomach is to the body ; for as the body can 



328 CITY PLANS. 

not grow, or build its fair proportions and lay on its 
colors, unless the rather un poetical matter of digestion 
is accommodated, so no city can live and become great, 
which is not grown or populated by the uses of busi- 
ness. The melancholy fact is that cities are so often lo- 
cated in a manner of accident as little opportune to the 
uses of business, as to the higher purposes of comfort, 
health, and ornament. Commonly they ask to be lo- 
cated at the foot of some valley, or at the conjunction 
of several vallevs where roads will naturallv center, and 
where rivers unite with one another, or with lakes or 
the sea, just because the natural confluences of business 
are there. And if the location is bad in many other re- 
spects, we have no reason to complain that trade drives 
the stake of location, saying *'Here.'' 

Accepting the decree, nothing is left us afterward, 
but to make the place all which it can be made, by a 
wise and well considered city plan. And how shall we 
proceed in framing it ? Obviously enough we can not 
so much as draw one line of it theoretically beforehand. 
The most we can do is to raise suggestions, and bring 
out elementary principles, leaving them to find such 
applications as they may, when the ground is fixed, 
and the real problem for that ground arrives. 

And here what I have already advanced, in showing 
the requisites of a fine city, will go far in determining 
the outlines of the plan to be made. Other suggestions 
of a more specific nature can also be made and, beyond 
that, everything must be left to the particular conditions 
of the particular case in hand. 



CITY PLAXS. 329 

The first thing commonly is to consider the business 
frontages of the river, lake, or bay, and accept their 
lines as the fixed determinations of nature, requiring 
everything else in the plan to have some proper refer- 
ence to them. 

In the next place, it should be considered along 
what low grounds or depressions of surface the railroads 
will ask to come in ; for the railroads always seek the 
lines of depression. Here too they can be more easily 
bridged, so as to offer no obstruction to the circulations 
of the streets. Along these low grounds too, on one or 
possibly on both sides of the railroads, there will com- 
monly be laid, in lines partly conforming to them, great 
avenues of travel coming in from the country, under 
which also the principal sewers of drainage will find 
their place. 

Xext, if a little way back of the fi'ontages of business, 
there are blufts or precipitous slopes, the inquiry will 
be by what lines, spiral or oblique, they may best be 
ascended. So also if there are bluffs or hills at the back 
of the site to be occupied. 

Accepting, thus far, the lines of nature, which will 
commonly be curvilinear, and will make irregular an- 
gles with each other, the skeleton of the plan that is to 
be, is made out, and the filling up only remains. And 
this will be done to a considerable desfree, at least, bv a 
rectangular block-work, adjusted by some principal 
straight line, or lines, running up and along the natural 
summits, or ridges between the low grounds and their 
avenues. These principal, straight line streets, having 

23" 



830 CITY PLANS. 

the position of dignity, will be the Broadways of the 
plan. They will be flanked, on either side, of course, 
by parallels, and intersected by streets at right-angles, 
running down to the low" grounds. But if the ground 
of the central street, or Broadway, is high enough to 
give a considerable slope to the intersecting streets, 
they should never cross over, but should meet, on one 
side, the centers of blocks on the other; because the 
eye, looking up, will only look out into the open sky, 
if they cross over, and see nothing beside ; whereas, if 
it could meet some grand architectural frontage, looking 
down — some church, or college, or court-house, or bank, 
or exchange, or hotel — the aspect of elegance and beauty 
would be maintained, in a degree that is always im- 
posing. Indeed, it may be laid down as a rule, that 
no straight street should ever cross over the back 
of a summit, or considerable convexity, and should 
never fail to cross over a valley, or depression; for, 
when it crosses a convexity, the eye will only look 
through into vacancy, and when it crosses a hollow 
surface, everything moving in it, from one end to the 
other, will be visible at a glance, and a scene of perpet- 
ual, ever shifting, vivacity will be maintained. 

Besides, it is a great point in the planning of a city, 
to get as many good frontages for architecture as possi- 
ble ; so that, moving through it in every direction, the 
eye will be always meeting, in square front if possible, 
some grandly imposing or beautiful object. A city 
like Philadelphia has no frontages, and, if it were made 
up of palaces, the eye would only look by them, never 



CITY PLANS. 831 

at ttiem, and they would make but a feeble, side-glance 
impression. On the other hand, a city planned like 
Edinburgh in the new part, or in the happy combina- 
tion of the old and the new, would so display its front- 
ages, at every turn, as to make everything fine even 
doubly impressive. 

Thus far we are able to say, with great positiveness, 
what should or should not be done. But there is a 
large field left, where the conditions must be variable, 
and where only a large, well trained discretion can suf- 
ficiently direct. 

It may be that the site to be occupied has no middle 
ground of elevation, but lies in a bowl of depression, 
^irrounded by a rim of overhanging summits. In that 
very fortunate case, everything must be so ordered as 
to take the best advantage of the ground. The center 
now will be the chief point of show or impression ; for 
everything looks into it, and all the motion of the cen- 
tral crossings will be visible from the surrounding 
slopes, or summits. If the streets do not radiate from 
this center, or from some open ground reserved for the 
more imposing structures of the city, they should have 
their crossings arranged so as to show all the motion 
going on, and to make the frontages of architecture 
conspicuous. And then the summits, visible from the 
center on every side, should be kept for the occupancy 
of great institutions not wanted in the city itself — col- 
leges, armories, hospitals, asylums, and the like, ar- 
ranged to overlook and crown the amphitheater below. 

Sometimes the ground of a city site will be so far 



332 CITY PLANS. 

broken by projecting bill-sides, tbat tbe streets, wbicb 
are generally straigbt and cross at rigbt-angles, will be 
most naturally deflected, or turned off into new lines; 
or tbey will require to be curved about tbe faces, bere 
and tbere, of projecting promontories. In sucb cases 
there sbould never be any attempt to force a line 
against nature ; for a curvilinear street is always agree- 
able and graceful where there is a natural reason for it, 
which the eye will at once distinguish. On a dead 
plane there can be no such reason, and a crooked street 
is never to be planned, because it will never be agreea- 
ble — the plan must be conformed to geometric lines; 
but, among hills and moving round their faces, nothing 
in fact is harder and more repulsive than dashes of 
deep excavation to cut a line straight through. The 
same law holds in respect to gradings, when the line of 
grade is cut by defiles to be crossed. No uniform 
grade should be forced in such cases by cutting and fill- 
ing, but the surrender to nature should be gracefully 
made, by only so far tempering the inequalities, as to 
produce a moderately waving surface. The rule to be 
followed in all such cases, whether of deflection, or of 
unequal grade, is to make the lines flow gracefully into 
each other by curves, and never allow the change to be 
notified by knee-joint angles. All angles greater than 
about forty-five degrees, w^hether in grade or direction, 
have a mean look, and the wider the angle, the meaner 
the look ; as if they were the notching of a surveyor's 
stations — indicating the work of a surveyor and not of an 
artist. In grades their vulgarity is even quite intolerable. 



CITY PLANS. 333 

The beauty of a city depends, to a considerable de- 
gree, on the right arrangement and due multiplication 
of vacant spaces. Thus, where straight line streets 
meet those which are in curves, an irregular and small 
opening may be left with advantage, to be occupied by 
a watering-place, a fountain, or a statue. If there be 
some point from which many streets open by radiant 
lines, a fine effect will be secured, by drawing there an 
elipse, or circle, or irregular figure of open ground that 
will cut oft" the otherwise sharp ending blocks, and 
making room, at the center, for some column, or monu- 
mental tower, or equestrian statue, that will meet the 
eye looking in from every direction down the radiating 
streets. If there be some very large section of the city 
which is covered by rectangular block-work, the mo- 
notony should be relieved by here and there a vacant 
block, kept open for some kind of ornamental use. Or, 
since nothing placed in the center of such a block will 
be visible from the streets coming in, four blocks may 
be truncated at their corners, to make a vacant space or 
opening, at the center of which any imposing ornament 
will meet the eye from every point, however distant in 
the streets which make their angle of crossing at the 
center thus occupied. These vacant spaces, duly mul- 
tiplied, and rightly managed, will not only be so many 
breathing places, but will add immensely to the variety, 
vivacity, and impressive elegance of the city. 

The providing and right location of a sufficient park, 
or parks, is a matter of still greater consequence. For 
an overgrown city, like London, two or three are not 



334 CITY PLANS. 

too many. A small city will require but one. This 
one too should be neither too large, nor too small, but 
sliould correspond with the wants and proper expendi- 
tures of the population. And as it can not be known, 
at the founding of a city, how large it is going to be, it 
would be well if a considerable section of ground were 
held in reserve, for a time, to be sold off finally, in part, 
if it shall appear that all of it will not be wanted. It 
should be as nearly central as it can without crowding 
into the spheres of business. The form or figure will be 
most pleasing if it is irregular, bounded partly by curve 
lines, partly by straight. It should never be hung like 
a saddle over the back of a hill. A mostly convex 
surface, .where every part is hidden, by the convex 
lines, from the sight of every other, can never be inter- 
esting. A level, or plane, is better, but even that 
should be avoided if possible. The life and vivacity 
of the park will be graduated hj the general show it 
makes of the multitudes walking, driving, or at play 
upon it, and of the multiplied colors they group in the 
picture. And, in order to this, the lines of the surface 
should be mostly concave lines, or convex only at fit 
intervals to give it variety. A scoop of ground, with a 
high rim of elevation on one or more sides, will be most 
advantageous and capable of the best effects. If, beside, 
there is a stream running through it, or pitching into it 
at some one of the angles, if it includes here and there 
a cliff of rock, if it faces mainly the south and not the 
north, and provides a good building ground on every 
side so as to allow, all round, a solid frontage of archi- 



CITY PLANS. 835 

tecture, broken by no interval of swamp, or impassable 
jutting of rock, nature will have done what ske could 
to make it perfect, and the city plan will have also done 
what it could in selecting and providing the ground — 
art must do the rest. 

It would be a matter of no small interest now to go 
over the plan of our own city, showing, in the light of 
the general principles here advanced, how many excel- 
lences it has that are continually regretted as irreparable 
defects, and how many supposed excellences that are 
really deformities. But this you will easily do for 
yourselves and therefore I desist. 

Two things let me suggest in closing. First, the 
very great instruction regarding this subject that would 
be derived from a study of the best planned cities of the 
world, such as Edinburgh, Paris, ISTaples, and especially 
the ancient city of Antioch, which appears to me to 
have been as nearly perfect in the plan as any city ever 
can be. If Philadelphia could be a study, it might not 
be amiss to include also that — until, at least, the use of 
it longer as an American model is corrected. 

I will also suggest, secondly, that, considering the 
immense importance of a right location, and a right 
planning for cities, no step should ever be taken by the 
parties concerned, without employing some person, who 
is qualified by a special culture, to assist and direct. 
Our engineers are trained for a very different kind of 
service, and are partly disqualified for this, by the habit 
of a study more strictly linear, more rigidly scientific, 
and less artistic. The qualifications of surveyors are 



336 CITY PLANS. 

commonly more meagre still — many of them could not 
even draw a spiral, if it was wanted, and would for that 
reason, if no other, march a line straight up a hill, even 
if it were impracticable. There is even wanted, in this 
field, a new profession specially prepared by studies 
that belong to the special subject matter. If a city, as 
a mere property concern, is to involve amounts of capi- 
tal greater than a dozen, or even a hundred railroads, 
why, as a mere question of interest, should it be left to 
the misbegotten planning of some operator totally dis- 
qualified ? Besides, if a railroad is badly located, the 
track can be altered, but here a mistake begun is for- 
ever irreparable. Most human errors are amended by 
repentance, but here there is no amendment — an ad- 
vantage lost can never be recovered, an error begun 
can never be repaired. Nothing is more to be regret- 
ted, in this view, than that our American nation, 
having a new world to make, and a clean map on 
which to place it, should be sacrificing our advantage 
so cheaply, in the extempore planning of our towns 
and cities. The peoples of the old world have their 
cities built for times gone by, when railroads and gun- 
powder were unknown. We can have cities for the 
new age that has come, adapted to its better conditions 
of use and ornament. So great an advantage ought not 
to be thrown away. We want therefore a city -planning 
profession, as trulj' as an architectural, house-planning 
profession. Every new village, town, city, ought to be 
contrived as a work of art, and prepared for the new 
age of ornament to come. 



IX. 

THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY.* 



To SETTLE the meaning of a word, having reference to 
great moral and political distinctions, is often a matter of 
much consequence. Never do men put themselves in 
the wrong so badly, or with so great seeming perversity, 
as when they have only confused, half-partisan ideas of 
the right. Thus it is enough, at such a time as this, to 
make thousands disloyal, that they have only random 
notions of loyalty, or such as come to them only in the 
smoke of a merely contentious use. The time has 
come, therefore, when this word, never till quite re- 
cently applied to American uses, should, if possible, 
have its meaning clearly made out and determinately 
settled. 

Heretofore we have looked upon this word, and, in 
fact, have even spoken of it, as a strictly old world's word, 
capable never of any fit application to the conditions of 
American society. It supposes, we have conceived, 
some kind of hereditary magistracy, such as belongs, in 
other nations, to royal and princely orders. Thus, 

* Undertaken as a Discourse, but not finished in time for the occasion. 

29 



338 THE DOCTKINE OF LOYALTY. 

when Mr. Dana published, thirty or forty years ago, his 
rather famous Article on the need of Orders in the 
State, to impersonate, and connect with a personal sen- 
timent the otherwise vapid and dry abstractions of law, 
liis regret was, in fact, that we had no place for loj^alty, 
and that, on our footing of equal society, no such nec- 
essary homage to a natively personal magistracy is pos- 
sible. He had probably never heard the word loyal ap- 
plied to an American citizen, and had no conception 
that it ever could be. All the great sentiiAents that 
figure under this word he conceived as belonging to the 
poetry of a more poetic society, blessed with the pic- 
turesque figures and distinctions of noble orders. And 
3^et we find ourselves using, now, the words loyal and 
loyalty^ as freely as they were ever used by Englishmen. 
AVe think, too, that we mean something by them, and, 
in fact, are having as great sentiments in them as ever 
swelled the bosom of any people in the world. And 
we are certainly so far right in this as a very badly con- 
fused use of the words allows us to be. We may even 
thank God in the fact that a public fire has broken out, 
finally, in our republican society, such as shows the ca- 
pacity of fire to be in it. "We have seen the consciously 
great sentiment of a great history bursting into flame, 
and we hope it may never cease to burn, till history it- 
self is ended. 

We are, just now, a kind of revelation to ourselves 
in this matter — surprised by the majestic figure now 
displayed of a self-devotion, that before slumbered and 
was hid in the recesses of our republican feeling and life. 



THE DOCTRIXE OF LOYALTY. 339 

In this really grand waking of high sentiment, a stranger 
might sometimes be even ludicrously affected by the 
awkwardness displayed in our exaltations ; even as the 
blinded Cyclop plucks up, as he wakes, the pine-tree 
for his staff, stalking down the hill-sides, with unsteady 
feet, and bellowing after the enemies he can not see or 
seize. We lay charges of disloyalty, having really no 
clear sense of what it is. TTe glory in the character as 
being just what it is not. TTe claim a right to the 
name of* it, on grounds that wholly misconceive it. 
The gentlemen of the law assume a special right to be 
its expounders and patrons, as if it were a matter be- 
longing to their sole jurisdiction, when it is, in fact, no 
matter of legal significance whatever, and never be- 
longed to the jurisdiction of the law at all. 

In our endeavor, therefore, to settle the meaning and 
place of loyalty, we shall be obliged, first of all, to ex- 
amine its relations to law, or to show, as we easily may, 
that it is, in fact, no subject of the law. 

A somewhat ^conspicuous legal advocate of jSTew 
York, Mr. Curtis, undertook, a short time ago, to en- 
lighten the people of that city and of the nation gener- 
all}', by a discourse on this particular subject. His un- 
necessary tirade against ''the frantic declamations of 
the pulpit,'"' does not incline me to engage in a contro- 
versy with him. I only advert to his argument be- 
cause it is a convenience to have some presentation of 
the question on that side, which undertakes to be re- 
sponsible for itself. 



3i0 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 

As a general tiling, legal questions will be more ade- 
quately handled by the legal profession ; but when the 
question stated, or the subject matter discussed, does 
not belong to the law at all, the mere claim of a legal 
jurisdiction gives no special title to respect. 

I undertake, then, to say that the law has nothing 
whatever to do with loyalty, and that it is not, in any 
sense, a legal subject. It stands on the same footing 
with patriotism, honor, and bravery — the law has no 
definitions for it, and never had; takes no j itrisdiction 
of it. The subject is purely moral, lying in the field of 
right sentiment and religion ; just like other matters 
that are analogous in some of the other relations of life. 
Thus a man is honorable, when he is true to his own 
personal convictions ; filial, when he is faithful and du- 
tiful to parents ; pious, when he is obedient and true to 
God; and in just the same way he is loyal when he is 
devoted and true to his government. And the law has 
nothing more to do with him in one case than in the 
others. There is no legal definition of honor, none of 
filial virtue, none of piety, and there is no more any 
such definition of loyalty. 

The English common law makes a distinction be- 
tween what it rather paradoxically calls ''imperfect ob- 
ligations" and those which are perfect; meaning, by 
the imperfect, those which are too far-reaching, and 
deep, and subtle, and spiritual, in one word, perfect, to 
be administered by the clumsy faculty of human tribu- 
nals ; and, by the perfect, those which are single, and 
simple, and superficial enough to be maintained by the 



THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 841 

short perception of human evidences and judgments. 
Ninety-nine one-liundredths of the duties of life, and 
probably a much larger proportion, belong to what are 
called, by the conceit of the law, imperfect obligations ; 
that is, to the class which are so perfect that God only 
can administer them, because only He can trace the 
motives, distinguish the evidences, and settle the judg- 
ments by which their violations will be fitly redressed. 
Honesty and dishonesty, for example, kindness and un- 
kindness, truth and untruth, patriotic and unpatriotic 
action, — the civil law can do nothing with these and a 
thousand other like obligations, save when the violation 
is by some outward act that is a personal or public 
wrong, and can be investigated by human testimony. 
Thus, if the dishonesty takes the shape of a fraud, if 
the unkindness takes the shape of cruelty to animals, 
or to one's children, if the untruth passes into slander 
or perjury, if the defect of patriotism runs to an act of 
conspiracy with the enemies of the country, then the 
civil law finds a case within its narrow jurisdiction, and 
is able to undertake the matter of redress — redressing, 
however, the fraud never as dishonesty, the cruelty 
never as unkindness, the perjury never as untruth, the 
conspiracy with enemies never as a breach of patriotism. 
Exactly so it is with loyalty. It belongs to the class 
of imperfect obligations, such as God only can adminis- 
ter, and the civil law has never any thing to do with it, 
till the disloyalty runs to some act of public treason. 
And then it punishes the disloyalty as treason, never as 
disloyalty. With that, as such, it has never any thing 

29- 



842 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 

to do, more thaa with dishonor, envy, covetousuess, 
uncharitableness, anger, hatred, revenge, censorious- 
ness; for which it has no definitions, and concerning 
which it has neither principles nor penalties. 

So stands this matter of loyalty as before the law ; it 
is wholly outside of the law, recognized and recogniza- 
ble only by the law of God. Therefore when this gen- 
tleman of the law, annoyed by the suspicion, or sup- 
posed imputation, of disloyalty, comes into the field 
challenging any one to give him a definition of it — that 
is, a proper, legal definition — protesting that he will 
not have this epithet shot at him as a ^'missile," unless 
by some one who can tell him, in good legal definition, 
what he means by it ! the brave air of confidence he 
assumes is much less imposing than it might be. It is 
much as if some one "should charge him with being a 
liar, or a coward, and he should reply, what then is 
your legal definition of a liar? and what of a coward? 
expecting to be triumphantly acquitted till the said 
legal definition is given ! It will occur to almost any 
one that a great many very bad vices and wicked de- 
linquencies could be sheltered, as easily, in the same 
manner. 

But, happily enough for the truth, he is bold to 
make out the definition himself which he thus peremp- 
torily demands ; and for this it is that I am particularly 
indebted to him and to the assistance he contributes by 
a legal statement of the subject. It will be understood 
beforehand that the definition given depends, of course, 
in some way, on the Constitution ; for there is no so 



THE DOCTliIXE OF LOYALTY. 348 

ready way of excusing the vice of disloyalty, or any 
otlier vice, as to hold the Constitution before it — are 
not all the ^T-ces Constitutional? He says, ''the true 
conditions of American loyalty are to be found in the 
law of the land, in the duties flowing from the Consti- 
tution of our country." Again, ''no duty of loyalty 
can possibly be predicated of any claim that is not 
founded in the supreme law of the land." He cites ac- 
cordingly from the Constitution what, in his view, con- 
cludes the argument — " This Constitution and the laws 
of the United States which shall be made in pursuance 
thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, 
under the authority of the United States, shall be the 
supreme law of the land." 

Any thing then is loyal which • is constitutional, or 
according to supreme law under the Constitution ; any 
thing disloj^al which is unconstitutional, or against the 
supreme law. What a conclusion this, to be set to the 
credit of the law, or to stand for the defense of society ! 
As if any citizen could not do the very worst, and 
wickedest, and most detestable, and really most mis- 
chievously disloyal things against the government, in a 
way that is perfectly constitutional, and ^dolates, in fact, 
no law whatever. Besides, if the Constitution and the 
supreme law are, in this manner, ''conditions of loy- 
alty," the conclusion appears to follow that whoever 
violates the Constitution, or the supreme law imder it, 
is iiJso facto disloyal ; that every one who takes a bribe, 
for example, or an extortions fee, or sails without a 
clearance, or smuggles a piece of goods, or does not 



344 * THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 

duly execute a legal process, or connives at a process 
whicli is fraudulent, is equally chargeable with disloy- 
alty on that account ! True he may be a very disor- 
derly person in these things, a great violator of the 
laws. But how many thousands have we that have 
been violating the laws of their country, in one way or 
another, every month and week, and perhaps day of 
their lives, who are yet offering even their bodies for 
their country on the field of battle? Doubtless they 
would be much better men and truer patriots, if they 
had been more conscientious subjects ; but there is no 
reason whatever to conclude against their loyalty, in 
the fa.ct that they sometimes break the supreme law. 
If they so far violate the law as to become traitors, 
every traitor is, of course, disloyal ; but not every dis- 
loyal person is a traitor, neither is any violation of the 
law, short of treason, a necessary proof of disloyalty. 
It may be such a proof, or it may not. 

Loyalty then is no subject of law or legal definition. 
It belongs entirely to the moral department of life. It 
is what a man thinks and feels and contrives, not as 
being commanded, but of his own accord, for his 
country and his country's honor — ^his great sentiment, 
his deep and high devotion, the fire of his habitual or 
inborn homage to his country's welfare. It goes before 
all constitutions, and by the letter of all statutes, 
to do and suffer, out of the spontaneous liberties of 
right feeling, what the petty constructions and laggard 
judgments of the State can not find how to compel. It 
does not measure itself by what the Constitution or the 



THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 345 

laws prescribe. It has no art of contriving, for itself 
and others, how to hide from the country behind th6 
Constitution. Loving the Constitution warmly enough 
to even die for it, what will it more certainly despise, 
for just that reason, than to plead the letter of it as the 
measure of its obligation? Doubtless it is something 
not to violate the Constitution or the statute laws. In 
ordinary times, one might naturally enough give it as 
the definition of a good citizen. But genuine loyalty is 
in a higher key, at such a time as this. One may even 
be a great stickler for the Constitution, at such a time, 
and be only one of the most pestilent movers of sedi- 
tion — more poisonously disloyal than he could be in 
the open renunciation of his allegiance. The loyal citi- 
zen, at such a time, do nothing but what the Constitu- 
tion or supreme law of the country requires of him ! 
Why the supreme law requires not one of the duties 
that are so genuinely great and true in loyalty; to vol- 
unteer body and life for the country; to stand fast 
when leaders are incompetent and armies reel away in 
panic before the foe ; to send off to the field, as bravely 
consenting women do, husbands, sons, and, brothers, 
the props and protectors of home ; to wrestle day and 
night in prayer, as Christian souls are wont, bearing 
the nation as their secret burden, when, for sex, or age, 
or infirmity, they can not do more ; to come forward as 
protectors and helpers of the children made fatherless ; 
to give money and work and prepare expeditions of 
love to mitigate the hardships of the wounded in their 
hospitals ; to vote with religious fidehty for what will 



346 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY 



N. 



help and save the country, rising wholly above the 
mercenary motives and selfish trammels of party — why 
the supreme law requires not one of these, nor, in fact, 
any thing else that belongs to a loyal and great soul's 
devotion; how then is it the measure and bound of 
loyalty ? 

The mistake, at this point, of those gentlemen who 
come forward to instruct us in the leofal definitions of 

o 

loyalty, is that they conceive it to be the same thing as 
keeping allegiance; confounding, thus, the tamest and 
lowest of all modes of political virtue with the highest 
and noblest, the legal with the moral, compulsion with 
impulse. What can be a lower style of citizenship 
than that of a man who does not, or it may be dares 
not, break allegiance ? 

But if the loyal man does more than simply keep al- 
legiance, or simply hold fast the Constitution, he will, 
at least, do that, a certain class will urge, and here pre- 
cisely it is that we incur so many charges of disloyalty 
— our disloyalty consists in nothing but our fidelity to 
the Constitution. As the Constitution is dangerously 
violated by the executive magistracy of the nation, 
what is required of us but to thwart and, if possible, 
turn back that magistracy — does not lo3^alty itself re- 
quire it ? There could not be a greater mistake ; what 
is more frequent than a disagreement with some party 
or administration, about the constitutionality of this or 
that particular measure? Is the loyal subject, there- 
fore, justified in doing every thing he can against the 
government, or to cripple the success of the govern- 



THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 347 

ment? By the supposition he is in the minority, and 
the Constitution itself expects him to suspend his judg- 
ment, and, for so long a time, defer to the superior 
right of the administration ; else there would never be 
any thing but anarchy under the Constitution. Is it 
not then, do you ask, his right and duty, in such a 
case, to raise a vote, if possible, against such an admin- 
istration, and bring in a better that shall rectify the 
abuse ? Sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. If it 
happens at the time that there is a grand rebellion on 
foot, throwing off, by open proclamation, all the bonds 
of allegiance, and tearing the nation itself asunder for- 
ever, and if this rebellion waits to see dissensions raised 
and will even value more a defeat of the administration, 
than it would the greatest possible victory in the field 
— ^in such a case, any citizen of a large and steady loy- 
alty will be slow to redress some partial, or partly 
questionable, breach of the Constitution, by a course 
that jeopardizes plainly even the existence of the na- 
tion itself. Such kind of redress for the Constitution 
he will even declare to be a crime of faction against it, 
because of its untimely obtrusion. All the worse, if it 
is undertaken as a part^^ measure — he will then both 
disrespect the motive, and despise the recklessness and 
almost treasonable perversity of it. And if the en- 
deavor is maintained by appeals that indicate sympa- 
thy, or almost friendshij), or it may be even connivance 
with the flagrant treason of the times, he can not, as a 
loyal raan, be any thing less than profoundly disgusted. 
The instinct of a loyal heart is wonderful]}^ single. In 



348 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 

the hour of the nation's peril, it can not look after that 
and party together. It scorns the attempt at such a 
time to divide or carry double, jDrotesting — 

" Who can be temperate and furious, 
Loyal and neutral in a moment?" 

— let US fight our nation's enemies and destroyers till 
they are crushed everlastingly, and then, if we can, it 
will be time to amend the abuses of the laws. 

"While putting the case in this form, let me not be 
understood to allow, or at all believe, that the Constitu- 
tion has, in fact, been violated. It can not be main- 
tained that the Confiscation Act is any such violation, 
unless on the merely theoretic and speculative ground 
that, covering the slave property of rebel masters, it 
supposes the assumption, so far, of a possible ownership 
of such property by the government, at the moment 
of its lapse into freedom, — an objection that no one can 
very seriously feel. The Proclamation of the President 
is even less open to objection, because it is no civil act 
at all, but simply an act of war, formally based in the 
rights of war. As such it is an act wholly outside of 
the Constitution, having no civil character at all ; save 
that Congress and the courts of law must needs respect 
the emancipation executed by it, as far as it is de facto 
executed, or, at the cessation of the war, may be. 
They will only be so far obliged by it, that persons 
emancijoated and taken into the service and protection 
of the government, can not be remanded back to 
slavery, without a cruel violation of good faith. And 
if the war continues long enough, that is, till the whole 



THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 349 

domain of slavery has been crossed and trampled by 
our armies, and a half million of the slaves have been 
put in the field, it will plainly enough be impossible 
for the institution of slavery to have any standing of 
existence allowed to it longer, except in the loyal 
states. Does any one ask what, in that case, becomes 
of the Constitution — what of the Article pledging the 
suppression of slave insurrections ? what of the Article 
requiring that persons held to service, or labor, shall be 
given up, when taken as fugitives in other states ? what 
of the Article giving to slavery a three-fifths right of 
representation ? The answer is, that every word and 
line of these Articles stands precisely as it stood before 
— the Constitution that is, is the Constitution that was, 
without any particle of abatement or change. It only 
happens that the slavery itself is gone to which the 
Constitution attached, gone by a power outside of all 
civil proceeding, just as if it had been swept away by a 
pestilence, gone just as ^^ Indians not taxed," in the ex- 
ception clause, are gone, or will be, when there are Indi- 
ans no longer. It is one thing for a Constitution to be 
cloven down and a very different thing that the subject 
matter to which it attached no longer exists. Every 
soldier of the rebellion, for example, who has fallen in 
this dreadful war, had his rights of life and property 
guaranteed by the Constitution, but the war has put 
him under ground ; the result being that the guarantee 
stands exactly where it stood, only, for so many as 
have thus fallen, it does not attach. So when slavery 
is dead, by the act of war, the faith of the Constitution 

30 



350 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 

will Stand, only it does not find the matter existing 
any more to whicli it gave its pledges. 

Returning now, from this brief excursion, to the 
great principle that loyalty is a moral affair, gTaduated 
and measured by no mere terms of allegiance, or statu- 
tory obligation, some one may remind us that the word 
itself indicates, in its very composition, a close relation 
to law. It is literally and even etymologically law- 
alty ; how then comes it to be a purely moral word, 
having nothing at all to do with legal definitions and 
duties? The answer is two-fold; first, that it has 
nothing to do with the law, only in the sense that the 
law has nothing -to with it: for how can a purely 
moral, volunteer devotion be enforced bv legal meth- 
ods? Secondlv, that it is a kind of homage historic- 
ally older than statutes, having respect as to a law 
moral or primitive, which goes before all enactments. 
Thus it is a great mistake to suppose, as many have 
done, that English loyalty has respect, directly and 
dimply, to the persons of the king and his noble ordei-s. 
It pays them homage because there is felt to be a law 
primitive that makes them and creates for itself, by in- 
heritance, a magistracy in them. And that homage is 
law-alty, because it accepts them as the organs of a 
grand providential order, prior to all histor\', older 
than all statutes. Just so there was a Constitution 
here, if we may so speak, before the Constitution, a na- 
tion before the defined Articles of nationality. It re- 
quired, in fact, as good and high loyalty to fight the 
Providential nation out into independence, as it now 



THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 351 

does to defend it. Nay, it required more loyalty to 
make the Constitution, tlian it ever can to keep it. It 
was tliat old providential Constitution, too, prior to the 
Constitution, prior even to the Confederacy, that gave 
the Convention itself a right to say by what kind of 
vote the Constitution should be binding; for, if the 
body had no right, stood in no providential order, then 
the vote prescribed never had or can have any binding 
force. Loyalty, in this view^, is even older than the 
Constitution; a moral bond created by Disposing Prov- 
idence, and sanctified to be the matrix of the coming 
nationality and the Constitution to be. 

It must also be added, as regards the relations of the 
Constitution and the laws to loyalty, that they may be 
so handled, by perverse construction, as even to make 
a genuine loyalty impossible. Just this was the effect 
of Mr. Calhoun's doctrine of state rights, and it could 
have no other. Loyalty, so far, is like chastity; the 
perpetual boasting of a right against it makes a full end 
of it shortly. - Further, as no husband and wife can 
once name the word divorce without making sure of 
the fact, so no people can so much as talk of retroces- 
sion from their government as a right, without having 
half accomplished the fact already. Government, like 
marriage, is either a finality, a state of supreme order 
that suffers no other even to be thought of, or else it is 
nothing. All the great sentiments that may gather to 
it and fortify its life depend on this. And, in this 
view, Mr. Calhoun, so often recognized as the great 
statesman, or political philosopher, has the very singu- 



352 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 

lar merit of having made up a theory of our govern- 
ment which does not even allow it to be government 
at all. It is only a congeries of little supremacies, that 
may stay together as long as they please, parting when 
they please; a general sovereignty by leasehold, till 
some one of a score of minor sovereignties may see fit 
to stop the lease! He is a philosopher, in fact, who 
never, in his life, conceived the foundations of a gov- 
ernment ; and it will even be one of the wonders of the 
coming ages that he believed, as he really appears to 
have done, the flimsy, traditional assumptions he takes 
for his first principles; another, that a great people, 
even in its green age of history, could have discovered 
any look of philosophy in the wooden platitudes of his 
argument. Indeed, it is one of the bitter mortifications 
of this dreadful rebellion, that it is the price we pay for 
shallow doctrine ; viz., such as gives us a government 
having no final authority — just that imbecile, mock 
majesty that Mr. Buchanan so fitly represented, when 
protesting, under his official oath to save the Constitu- 
tion, that he could not find any thing to do for it! a 
government challengeable every year and day by new 
threats; bidding always for impatience and defiance; 
impossible therefore to become a fixed center of hom- 
age and loyalty ; inevitably doomed, by its own weak- 
ness, to lose, at last, the scanty homage of allegiance. 

Dropping now all further reference to the Constitu- 
tion and the laws, as conditions of loyalty, let us pass 
to what is more simple and refreshing ; viz., to the 



THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 353 

purely moral nature and quality of it, where, happily, 
we shall have less debate and be able to advance more 
rapidly. 

The first thing that occurs to us here, is the close 
affinity of the loyal sentiment, with that which attaches 
us to our native locality, or country. It is, in the same 
way, a kind of natural necessity, upon such as feel nat- 
urally, and is almost equally undiscriminating. Thus, 
we remember that, conversing once with a sailor at 
sea, we rallied him playfully on the hardship it must 
be to him to return to the rather dismal and forlorn 
country of his birth, and were handsomely, because 
touchingly, answered — ^^Why, sir, if I had been born 
upon some nakedest, most barren rock of the ocean, it 
would be dear to me." The woman of Sychar, in just 
the same way, could not bear so much as the hint of a 
more ^ living water" than the ancient father Jacob's 
well ; and if Jacob had left a government instead, she 
would have been as jealous for that with only better 
reason. Even Jesus, himself, the only true and 
grandly real cosmopolitan among men, because he is 
the world's incarnate Lord and Saviour, proves his 
proper humanity still, in the distinctly Jewish feeling 
of his humanly political nature ; calling it the heavenly 
felicity to be in Abraham's bosom, and exulting in ex- 
pectation of a day when many shall come from the 
Bast, and from the West, and from all remotest Grentile 
peoples, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Ja- 
cob, in the kingdom of God — using, fondly, this very 
exclusive image, to signify the grandeur and dignity of 

30^ 



354 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 

liis most catholic, universal empire. Now, this natural 
sentiment of country, and race, and fatherhood, is but 
a very short remove distant from loyaltj^, running into 
it even by a kind of necessit}^ It inaugurates law in 
us before the law is written, or pronounced; passing 
through all codes, and polities, and constitutions, when 
they arrive, to shape them to itself and flavor them 
with sanctity. It takes hold of what is most generous 
in our nature, without and before our consent, and be- 
gets a kind of homage in us that makes us patient and 
brave in sacrifice for the state. Our very nature is po- 
litical, in short, just as it is domestic ; configured to the 
state as to the familv, craving after loyal emotion, even 
as after family love. Without this political equipment, 
we should not even be complete men. 

Being so nearly natural or close to nature, the loyal 
sentiment is free of course. Allegiance mav be com- 
pelled ; loyalty is a volunteer devotion, else it is 
nothing. One requires to be watched, the other keeps 
watch itself for the nation. To make sure of one may 
require a legal or court-martial investigation ; the other 
goes by hearts'-full, always out in its evidences, never 
ambiguous. A man stuck fast in the intrigues, and 
swayed by the clanship of party, will contrive to main- 
tain a dastardly and mean allegiance, arguing, it may 
be, for the Constitution, with only pretended concern, 
when he has no appetite, in fact, but for some party 
victory; deploring the wrongs of the magistrates in 
power, when really he is only feeding his appetite on 
them ; and asserting what he calls his sacred right of 



THE DOCTEIXE OF LOYALTY. 355 

speech only to stir up faction, even in the critical hour 
of the nation's peril. But, where there is a true soul of 
loyalty, patience with the miscarriages and even the 
supposed wrongs of government, slowness to accuse, 
readiness to postpone accusations that might be too hast- 
ily made — any thing almost will be yielded to for the 
time, that may fortify the cause of the nation and give 
it victory. Conscious of party affinities, swayed by 
strong, possibly just, prejudices against the ruling ad- 
ministration, there will yet be such nobility of feeling 
in the true loyal citizen, as allows him never to bear a 
look of sympathy, or suffer a suspicion of connivance 
with disorder and rebeUion. 

How far the loyal sentiment reaches and how much 
it carries with it, or after it, must also be noted. It 
yields up willingly husbands, fathers, brothers, and 
sons, consenting to the fearful chance of a home always 
desolate. It offers body, and blood, and life, on the al- 
tar of its devotion. It is, in fact, a political worship, 
offering to seal, itself by a martyrdom in the field. 
Wonderful, grandly honorable fact, that human nature 
can be lifted by an inspiration so high, even in the 
fallen state of wrong and evil ! 

It is also one of the noble incidents of loyalty that it 
is not easily discouraged. It has the most '^perdurable 
toughness " of all human sentiments. The burdens it 
will bear, the sacrifices it will make, the defeats it will 
suffer without surrender to them, the weary, long, long- 
years of hoj)e deferred and desolating war it will un- 
dergo, still fighting on ; the mistakes or imbecilities of 



356 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 

bad counsel and ineffective leadership it will excuse and 
go on to repair — these and such like are the proofs of 
loyalty, and history is full of the sublime examples it 
has given, from the heroic age of the Greeks down to 
the last modem records. Men will faint any where and 
evervwhere, sooner than they will in what thev do for 
their laws and liberties. It is onlv the doubtfullv 
loyal, such as offer weak and washy protestations of 
loyalty in the place of an earnest devotion, that see li- 
ons always in the way and begin to talk discourage- 
ment. The true, great heart of loyal men is rock to all 
waves of disaster. Possibilities left, discouragements 
are nothinsr. "Whoever then will talk to us of his lov- 
alty at such a time as this, let him see, first of all, that 
his heart is tough in it, and then we shall know that he 
is qualified to speak. 

It also requires to be noted that loyalty is a senti- 
ment close akin to honor. I speak not here of that 
mock honor which some men hold by their will, when 
the true is gone out in their character, but of that 
which is true, that in which a firm, great mind honors, 
first of all, itself. All great and true sentiments have 
this kind of honor in them, and hence it is that, in a 
great war, heroically maintained for ends of patriotic 
devotion, the public sentiment is raised to a grade of 
honor so much hieher than it can be, under the bland- 
ishments of peace and prosperous security. Every 
man feels that he is exalted, raised in honor before him- 
self, when he gives himself to his country. And this 
majestic honor of the mind to itself is the power that 



THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 357 

makes a hero. There is even a kind of impassiveness 
in it. The soul is put in armor by it, as if the bosom 
were become a keep of iron. Even as the great poet 
says with true dramatic insight — 

" A jewel in a ten times barred up chest 
Is — a bold spirit in a loyal breast." 

All the romantic virtues move in the ranges of loyalty. 
Hence also it is that the class of men who are most 
doubtfully loyalj or positively disloyal, are commonly 
such as are wanting somewhere, in the great-heart 
principle. The brute masses that have never risen to a 
conception of honor, the hacks and expectant spoils- 
men of party, the wooden decoys and trimmers of the 
pulpit, the sophists and mere words-men of the bar, 
whoever wants the great-heart altogether, or has a low, 
mean side of a heart otherwise noble — such commonly, 
if not always, are the natures that run to disloyalty ; 
they make up a class, of whom it might generally be 
told beforehand. 

There is also,. we must not omit to say, a very per- 
ceptible and very close relation between loyalty and re- 
ligion. For what is religion but loyalty to God, and if 
there were no letting down of our great nature by sin, 
how grandly and heroically would it stand, taking sides 
eternally with God! The summit of our nature is 
capped by its homages, and they rise in dignity accord- 
ing to the height of their objects. What the man goes 
up to, thus, or after, in worship and devotion, is the 
measure of his noblest reach and capacity. Cleaving 
thus to God in worship, to parentage in filial piety, to 



358 THE DOCTKINE OF LOYALTY. 

great names in reverence, he also cleaves, in the same 
natural way, to the state. And the two homages in 
particular, that which goes after the state, and that 
which goes after God, are so clearly related that we 
may even speak of loyalty as the religion of our polit- 
ical nature. ISTor is it any mean token of our poor 
broken humanity that we have a political nature, 
mounting thus instinctively towards order, and justice, 
and complete society. Besides, the state itself, erected 
by eternal Providence, is felt to be a throne which He 
maintains and crowns even by His divine sanctions. 
We do not commonly speak of those who give up their 
lives on the battle-fields of their country, as dying by 
martyrdom. And yet it is the martyrdom of loyalty 
unto which they freely gave their bodies, and know- 
ingly consented to the sacrifice. The martyrs of re- 
ligion scarcely make a sacrifice more real, or total, 
though they suffer in a way more tr^nng to constanc}^ 
We believe too that there is a relation so deep between 
true loyalty and religion, that the loyal man will be in- 
clined towards religion by his public devotion, and the 
religious man raised in the temper of his loyalty to his 
country, by his religious devotion. The two fires will 
burn together and one will kindle the other. How 
often have we heard, in this war, of men who have ac- 
tually become religious on giving themselves to their 
country as soldiers ! The religious feeling also breaks 
out, we may see, unwontedly, as the great struggle goes 
on, in our speeches and public proceedings, our procla- 
mations and the dispatches of our victorious generals. 



THE DOCTRINj: OF LOYALTY. 859 

Our recognitions of God are easy and natural, and we 
draw no small part of our strength from the confidence 
that God is with us and will not let ns fail in our cause. 
Much has been made by Englishmen, and occasion- 
ally by writers of our own country, of the supposed 
fact that loyalty, or the loyal sentiment, is the privilege 
only of states that are under the sway of princely fami- 
lies and orders of nobility. There is a very great 
practical mistake in such an impression. The assump- 
tion is that loyalty is a strictly personal sentiment, 
wanting, of necessity, some loyal or noble person to be 
the mark of its devotion. No vague, multitudinous, 
scarcely apprehensible object like a nation, or people, 
or even a constitution, will suffice, we are told ; it must 
have a person, or .throne, to embody all it clings to so 
fondly, in the native land, and native laws and liberties, 
and be the mark of its political worship — this to enjoy, 
or even as in fealty to serve. But the king, autocrat, 
monarch, or czar, is taken hold of thus by loyalty, be 
it observed, not . simply as being a person — little is 
known of him commonly in that regard — but he is ac- 
cepted simply as the symbol-person, in whom victorj^, 
and law, and state are embodied. Just as good a sjm.- 
bol, and, in some respects, better, we have, as republi- 
cans, in our flag; for it is no frothy and vapid excite- 
ment that stirs our headless passion, as many conceive, 
when we gather to our flag in vivas ^ and swear to main- 
tain it. Our flag represents every thing — the nation it- 
self, the history, the laws, the successes, the honors of 
the past, the promises of the great future unknown, all 



360 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 

that we have been, all that we can be. We make no 
idol of a poor rag in three colors, but we take it as the 
one all-sufficient symbol. No royal person could sig- 
nify as much with as little confusion. Most royal per- 
sons have bad passions, weaknesses, meannesses, vices, 
that awfully mar the symbol-force of their persons; 
flags have none. Loyalty puts nothing into them but 
honors, protections, principles of justice, promises of 
good, and then the flag it clings to with such homage 
and devotion is no more any such abstraction as many 
think of, when they sentimentally deplore the want of 
a personal objectivity in our institutions; it embraces 
all the good and great persons of the past, and all the 
blessed hopes of a good and great future. Therefore it 
is that we rush to the flag with so passionate fervor, 
and, with no particle of nonsense, vow to die for it. 
The symbol our loyalty has in it is only the more per- 
fect, that we are distracted by no personal imbecilities 
and vices, claiming homage, in part, to themselves. 

Loyalty, then, is seen to be no matter of legal juris- 
diction. It is a great moral sentiment that marks our 
political nature, and is next in dignity below the senti- 
ment of religion, which is loyalty to God. We are to 
judge it accordingly and all seeming defections from it, 
just as we do all other matters of a purely moral sig- 
nificance — such as truth, honor, honesty, charity. No 
man has a right to complain of being wronged, in the 
charge of disloyalty, just because he holds the Constitu- 
tion, or does not break out in some flagrant treason. 



THE DOCTKINE OF LOYALTY. 361 

He may even be more basely and miscliieyoiisly dis- 
loyal because he does not. By secret connivances, and 
factious words, and party cabals, he may even serve 
the enemies of his country more than he could by the 
open mustering of treason. Let no man whimper at 
the charge of disloyalty, then, just because he is too 
mucfe of a dastard in his crime to act himself boldly out 
and take the risk of a traitor's death. The meanest 
kind of disloyalty is that which keeps just within the 
law and only dares not perpetrate the treason it wants 
to have done ; which takes on airs of patriotic concern 
for the Constitution, when it really has none for all the 
wrong that can be done it by enemies openly fighting 
against it. Such persons must be judged morally, just 
as we judge all pretenders and hypocrites under false 
shows of virtue. We understand them well and read 
them, for the most part, truly, and it is too much to ask 
that we shall be fools for their sake. 

At the same time, there is a possibility of doing injus- 
tice in this charge of disloyalty. If we mean by it, as we 
often seem to do, that the persons charged in this man- 
ner have actually broken loose from their allegiance, or 
that they understand themselves to be really disloyal in 
their intent, it will often not be true. Moral defections 
more commonly cheat their victims at the beginning. 
They do not understand the immoralities in which they 
are being steeped, and, so far, do not intend them. In 
the same way it is possible for large masses of citizens 
to be fooled by the disloyalty they are in. Some of 
them are young and trust themselves to leaders who 

31 



362 THE DOCTKIXE OF LOYALTY. 

prey upon the green age of tlieir confidence. Some are 
ignorant and are taken artfully by catcli words of 
whictL they have really no understanding. And some, 
again, it must be admitted, have a mean, cold nature, 
in which all the great sentiments get a place of lodg- 
ment with difficulty. They can hardly mount high 
enough in feeling to conceive what loyalty is. •The 
sense of country, family, honor, the political or social 
sense, runs low in their sterile natures ; all the great io- 
spirations take them at an awful disadvantage. Mean- 
time, the crabbed, selfish impulses of clanship and 
party are a lean kine of poverty, devouring every thing 
noble or generous they might begin to feel. They 
think they are loyal, it may be, and then they will go 
to the Constitution or the court records to prove it! 
But the great heart — how can they have it when it is 
not in them? We will not deny the bare possibility 
of a tiny loyal sentiment in them. But who that 
knows them will ever expect more ? Who will even 
expect them to know that they are disloyal when they 
are ? Going after cabal more easily than after country, 
what will they do more naturally than give themselves 
to cabal and call it their country ? 

We see, in this manner, what multitudes there may 
be, in every community or country, who fall, as it 
were, by gravity, into the disloyal state, without in- 
tending it, or even knowing it. What, then, shall we 
say? Shall we class^ them as loyal? AVe can not 
do that. The best that we can do for them is to call 
them unloyal, or disloyal, and add the salvos of pity as 



THE DOCTKINE OF LOYALTY. 863 

a partial qualification. They ouglit to be condemned, 
and they must also be pitied. None the less to be 
pitied are they that they are, some of them, persons 
who have come, or would hereafter come, into condi- 
tions of power and public honor; for the day is at 
hand, when conditions of power and public honor are 
forever gone by to them. When this rebellion is 
finally put down, as it most assuredly will be, then the 
day of their damnation is come. They can now return 
to their country, but they must do it soon. To come 
back into the range of its honor and love when the day 
of trial is over, is impossible. Then it is too late — the 
gate is shut ! 

At the same time, that I may not seem to speak 
with unnecessary harshness, there is, truth obliges me 
to say, another mode, different from those which I have 
named, in which some persons have been carried over 
to the verge of disloyalty, by motives that more nearly 
entitle them to sympathy. I speak of those who have 
taken part hastily against the government, from a false 
anxiety to save the government. "Who of us that 
kept our sobriety, did not cling, for a time, to the status 
in quo of the political order and law ? — the same which 
has been popularly phrased, "the Constitution as it is" 
— for how shall we ever get back into a state of settle- 
ment, we said, if the terms of settlement are themselves 
gone by ? We did not perceive that the status in quo 
may be entirely changed, and the " Constitution as it 
is " remain untouched in its integrity. We saw clearly 
enough that slavery is one of the most assailable points 



364 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 

of weakness on the side of the rebellion, and, if not as- 
sailed, that it is even an element of strength in the re- 
bellion. The right of war to assail this point of weak- 
ness and turn it on our side, we did not doubt ; for it is 
even a first principle of public law. As little did we 
doubt that it must finally be done, if the war be long 
protracted ; recoiling still, with instinctive dread, from 
the terrible necessity. 

First came the Confiscation Act, then at length, and 
probably not too soon, the Proclamation — so compre- 
hensively worded that the President seemed to assume 
the right of a general emancipation, by his own civil 
edict. Many of our most sober and thoughtful citizens 
were alarmed. The hold of law appeared to be 
loosened, and every thing to be drifting towards inex- 
tricable anarchy. They took ground hastily, coming, 
as they thought, to the rescue of the law. They even 
went so far, in their zeal, as to set upon the govern- 
ment, in a way that, considering the time, was really 
not loyal, and it drew them farther, even than they 
knew, towards the rebellion itself. 

It is impossible not to yield' all such a degree of sym- 
pathy, and we shall do it the more easily if we find them 
ready now, at the more advanced stage of affairs, to ad- 
vance also themselves, and modify their sentiments 
enough to meet our new conditions. Sticking fast in 
the letter, when eternal destiny has pushed us out of it, 
every man can see is bad. Under the doom of war, 
we were bound to just the crisis we have reached, proc- 
lamation or no proclamation. It was right, for a time. 



THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 365 

to say, ''the Constitution as it is" — it still and always 
will be right, if we only understand how entirely the 
status in quo may be changed, without any breach upon 
the Constitution. This no statesman will forbid to 
change ; for the real statesman is no bigot, sticking fast 
in what he determined rightly, when it is a possibility 
forever gone by. When affairs move rapidly, he keeps 
up with affairs. Nothing is now left us, from the first 
nothing was finally to be left us, but to champion the 
liberty of the slave. We do not understand that the 
President meant any thing more, by his Proclamation, 
than to seize on the right of war, and to emancipate 
just as far and as fast as war could execute the fact. 
If he did, there is probably no court in the land that 
would execute his edict farther. In this understanding 
we can all be agreed, and also in the fact that the river 
of our destiny now runs where it must. We can not 
tie ourselves to the legalities longer, and reason upon 
the war as if it were only a sheriff's posse ou.t for the 
arrest of treason. We must take it as war, grim war, 
having all the rights of war, and must join ourselves 
heartily to it as the only chance of our future. The 
debates and misgivings are all over; nothing is now 
left us but loyalty to the cause. To some extent we 
have differed honestly, and in ways that do not exclude 
respect ; now there is no place for difference longer. 

It may not be amiss, in this connection, to suggest 
that constitutions are made to carry on government, not 
to carry back, rescue, redintegrate, government; and 
that, in this latter kind of endeavor, where, to simply 

31* 



366 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 

go by the letter, reasoning always from it, in the pro- 
fessional manner of the lawyers, would certainly sacri- 
fice both government and Constitution together, the 
real statesman will take a freer method for the salva- 
tion of both. According to the lawyers' method, the 
revolted states are just as truly under the Constitution 
now as ever; there is, of course, no legal right of 
blockade, no right of war, but only to send a sheriff 
and make service ; no right to distress and reduce the 
revolt by touching the security of slavery. But the 
statesman will reason differently. " These revolted 
states," he will say, ''are themselves parts of the docu- 
ment as truly as any of its articles. Tearing out these 
from the document, the sovereign order itself is so far 
broken up. If they can not be recovered, then, as 
the Constitution has another field, related to another 
neighborhood outside, with new dangers to encounter 
and diplomacies more critical and complex to manage, 
and a treaty of peace to arrange with successfully re- 
volting subjects, (which treaty itself must even be a 
breach of the Constitution,) I must, in true statesman- 
ship, assume a certain freedom under it, or the letter of 
it, that I n;ay save what I can of it, even though it be 
at the risk of some damage." Even as the skillful 
ship-master whom the storm is driving on a lee-shore 
off the gate of his harbor, will cut loose from his anchor 
and put himself bodly to sea, willing to save the ship 
without his anchor if he must, so, for the Constitution's 
sake, he will declare the blockade of rebel ports, inau- 
gurate a quasi war with the rebellion, permitting an 



THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 367 

exchange of prisoners, and will even dare to revolu- 
tionize revolution that lie may bring it under ; — all this 
by no permission of the Constitution, or possibly even 
against the letter of it, bravely determined to save 
what he can when he can not save all. In this we con- 
ceive he is truly, grandly, because practically, loyal; 
when if he wanted courage or spirit to strike off thus 
from the letter and take the open sea, his timid, pusil- 
lanimous coasting, would be scarcely better than treason. 
I have only to add, in conclusion, that when our 
present struggle is over and triumphantly ended, as it 
must some time be, then it will be our thanksgiving 
and joy that we have constitutions and laws more sub- 
lime and sacred than we ever thought them to be ; a 
name and heritage more august; and, what is more 
than all, that we have more heart for our country and 
a more intensely moral devotion to its honor and per- 
petuity. We shall then have passed the ordeal of his- 
tory. Our great battle-fields will be hallowed by song. 
Our great leaders and patriots will be names conse- 
crated by historic reverence. We shall be no more a 
compact, or a confederation, or a composition made up 
by the temporary surrender of powers, but a nation — 
God's own nation. These throes of civil order are 
but the schooling of our loyalty, and our political na- 
ture itself will be raised, under the discipline, by the 
sense of a new public honor and morality. What loy- 
alty was we did not even know before ; now we shall 
know it, and the word, at once, and fact will be Ameri- 
can — not American only, but republican. 



X. 

THE AGE OF HOMESPUN.* 



It has often occurred to others, I presume, as to me, 
to wish, it were possible, for once, in some of our 
historic celebrations, to gather up the unwritten part 
also of the history celebrated ; thus to make some fit 
account of the private virtues and unrecorded struggles, 
in whose silent commonalty, we doilbt not, are included 
all the deepest possibilities of social advancement and 
historic distinction. On this account, since the Histor- 
ical Address of yesterday presented us, in a manner so 
complete and so impressive to the feeling of us all, the 
principal events and names of honor by which our 
County has been distinguished, I am the more willing 
to come after, as a gleaner, in the stubble-ground that 
is left ; nor any the less so if, in gathering up the fallen 
straws of grain, I may chance to catch, in my rake, 
some of those native violets that love so well to hide 
their blue in the grass, and shed their fragTance undis- 
covered. I think you will agree with me, also, that 
nothing is more appropriate to a sermon, which is the 

* A Secular Sermon delivered at the Centennial Celebration of Litch- 
field County, August 14, 1851. 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 369 

form of my appointment, than to offer some fit remem- 
brance of that which heaven only keeps in charge, the 
nnhistoric deeds of common life and the silent, undis- 
tinguished good whose names are written only in 
heaven. In this view, I propose a discourse on the 
words of King Lemuel's mother : — 

Prov. 31 : 28. ^''Her children arise up and call her 
blessed J'' 

This Lemuel, who is called a king, is supposed by 
some to have been some Chaldee chief, or head of a clan ; 
a kind of Arcadian prince, like Job and Jethro. And 
this last chapter of the Proverbs is an Eastern poem 
called a ^^ prophecy," that versifies, in form, the advice 
which his honored and wise mother gave to her son. 
She dwells, in particular, on the ideal picture of a fine 
woman, such as he may fitly seek for his wife, or 
queen; drawing the picture, doubtless, in great part, 
from herself and her own practical character. ''She 
layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the 
distaff. She is - not afraid of the snow for her house- 
hold; for all her household are covered with scarlet. 
Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth 
among the elders of the land. She openeth her mouth 
in wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. 
She looketh well to the ways of her household, and 
eateth not the bread of idleness." Omitting other 
points of the picture, she is a frugal, faithful, pious 
housewife ; clothing her family in garments prepared 
by her industry, and the more beautiful honors of a 
well-kept, well-mannered house. She, therefore, it is, 



370 THE AGE OF HOMESPUy. 

who makes the center of a happy domestic life, and be- 
comes a mark of reverence to her children: — "Her 
children arise np and call her blessed." 

A very homely and rather common picture, some of 
you may fancy, for a queen or chief woman ; but, as 
3'ou view the subject more historically, it will become a 
picture even of dignity and polite culture. The rudest 
and most primitive stage of society has its most remark- 
able distinction in the dress of skins; as in ancient 
Scythia, and in many other parts of the world, even at 
the present day. The preparing of fabrics, by spinning 
and weaving, marks a great social transition, or ad- 
vance; one that was slowly made and is not even 
yet absolutely perfected. Accordingly, the art of spin- 
ning and weaving was, for long ages, looked upon as a 
kind of polite distinction ; much as needle-work is now. 
Thus when Moses directed in the preparation of cur- 
tains for the tabernacle, we are told that '^all the wo- 
men that were ivise-hearted did spin with their hands.'' 
That is, that the accomplished ladies who understood 
this fine art, (as few of the women did,) executed his 
order. Accordingly, it is represented that the most 
distinguished queens of the ancient time excelled in the 
art of spinning; and the poets sing of distaffs and 
looms as the choicest symbols of princely women. 
Thus Homer describes the present of Alcandra to 
Helen : 

'• Alcaudra, consort of his liigli command, 
A golden distaif gave to Helen's hand ; 
And that rich vase, with living sculpture wrought, 
Which, heaped with wool, the beauteous Philo brought, 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 371 

The silken fleece, impurpled for the loom, 
Eecalled the hyacinth in vernal bloom." 

So also Theocritus, when he is going to give a present 
to his friend's bride, couples it with verse : — 

" distaff! friend to warp and woof, 
Minerva's gift in man's behoof, 
Whom careful housewives still retain, 
And gather to their household gain, 
Thee, ivory distaff! I provide, 
A present for his blooming bride, 
With her thou wilt sweet toil partake, 
And aid her various vestes to make." 

If I rightly remember, it is even reported of Augustus, 
himself, at the height of the Roman splendor, that he 
wore a robe which was made for him by Livia, his wife. 
You perceive, in this manner, that Lemuel's mother 
has any but rustic ideas of what a wife should be. She 
describes, in fact, a lady of the highest accomplish- 
ments ; whose harpsichord is the distaff, whose piano is 
the loom, and who is able thus, by the fine art she is 
mistress of, to make her husband conspicuous among 
the elders of the land. Still, you will understand that 
what we call the old spinning-wheel, a great machine 
in its day, was not known till long ages after this; 
being, in fact, a comparativel}^ modern, I believe a 
German or Saxon, invention. The distaff, in the 
times of my text, was held in one hand or under one 
arm, and the spindle, hanging by the thread, was occa- 
sionally hit and twirled by the other. The weaving 
process was equally rude and simple. 

These references to the domestic economy of the more 



372 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

ancient times have started recollections, doubtless, in 
many of yon, that are characteristic, in a similar way, 
of our own primitive history. You have remembered 
the wheel and the loom. You have recalled the fact, 
that our Litchfield County people, down to a period 
comparatively recent, have been a people clothed in 
homespun fabrics — not wholly, or in all cases, but so 
generally that the exceptions may be fairly disregarded. 
In this fact I find my subject. As it is sometimes said 
that the history of iron is the history of the world, or 
the history of roads a true record always of commercial 
and social progress, so it has occurred to me that I may 
give the most effective and truest impression of Litch- 
field County, and especially of the unhistoric causes in- 
cluded in a true estimate of the century now past, under 
this article of homespun; describing this first century 
as the Homespun Age of our people. 

The subject is homely, as it should be; but I think 
we shall find enough of dignity in it, as we proceed, 
even to content our highest ambition — the more, that I 
do not propose to confine myself rigidly to the single 
matter of spinning and weaving, but to gather round 
this feature of domestic life, taken as a symbol, or cen- 
tral type of expression, whatever is most characteristic 
in the living picture of the times we commemorate, and 
the simple, godly virtues we delight to honor. 

What we call History, considered as giving a record 
of notable events, or transactions, under names and 
dates, and so a really just and true exhibition of the 
causes that construct a social state, I conceive to be 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 373 

commonly very much of a fiction. True "worth is for 
the most part unhistoric, and so of all the beneficent 
causes and powers included in the lives of simply 
worthy men ; causes most fundamental and efficient, as 
regards the well-being and public name of communities. 
They are such as flow in silence, like the great powers 
of nature. Indeed, we say of history, and sa}^ rightly, 
that it is a record of e-vents — that is, of turnings out, 
points where the silence is broken by something appar- 
ently not in the regular flow of common life ; just as 
electricity, when still, goes through and masters the 
world, holding all atoms to their places and quickening 
even the life of our bodies, and becomes historic only 
when it thunders ; though it does nothing more, in its 
thunder, than simply to notify us, by so great a noise, 
of the breach of its connections and the disturbance of 
its silent "work. Besides, in our historic pictures, we are 
obliged to sink particulars in generals, and so to gather, 
under the name of a prominent few, what is really done 
by nameless multitudes. These, we say, led out the 
colonies, these raised up the states and communities, 
these fought the battles. And so w^e make a vicious 
inversion, not seldom, of the truth; representing as 
causes those who, after all, are not so much causes as 
effects, not so much powers as instruments, in the occa- 
sions signalized by their names — caps only of foam, 
that roll conspicuous in the sun, lifted, still, by the deep 
under-swell of waters hid from the eye. 

If then you ask who made this Litchfield County 
of ours, it will be no sufficient answer that you 

32 



374 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

get, however instructive and useful, when you have 
gathered up the names that appear in our |)^blic rec- 
ords, and recited the events that have found an honora- 
ble place in the history of the County, or the republic. 
You must not go into the burial places, and look about 
only for the tall monuments and the titled names. It 
is not the starred epitaphs of the Doctors of Divinity, 
the Generals, the Judges, the Honorables, the Gover- 
nors, or even of the village notables called Esquires, 
that mark the springs of our successes and the sources 
of our distinction. These are rather effects than 
causes; the spinning-wheels have done a great deal 
more than these. Around the honored few, here a 
Bellamy or a Day, sleeping in the midst of his flock, 
here a Wolcott or a Smith, an Allen or a Tracy, a 
Eeeve or a Gould, all names of honor — round about 
these few and others like them, are lying multitudes of 
worthy men and women, under their humbler monu- 
ments, or in graves that are hidden by the monumental 
green that loves to freshen over their forgotten resting 
place; and in these, the humble but good many, we 
are to find the deepest, truest causes of our happy 
history. Here lie the sturdy kings of Homespun, who 
climbed among these hills, with their axes, to cut away 
room for their cabins and for family prayers, and so for 
the good future to come. Here lie their sons, who fod- 
dered their cattle on the snows, and built stone-fence 
while the corn was sprouting in the hills, getting ready, 
in that way, to send a boy or two to college. Here lie 
the good housewives that made coats, every year, like 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 375 

Hannali, for their children's bodies, and lined their 
memory with catechism. Here the millers that took 
honest toll of the rye ; the smiths and coopers that su- 
perintended two hands and got a little revenue of honest 
bread and schooling from their small joint stock of two- 
handed investment. Here the district committees and 
school-mistresses, the religions society founders and 
church deacons, and withal a great many sensible, 
wise-headed men, who read a weekly newspaper, loved 
George "Washington and their country, and had never a 
thought of going to the G'eneral Assembly ! These are 
the men and women that made Litchfield County. 
Who they are, by name, we can not tell — no matter 
who they are — we should be none the wiser if we could 
name them, they themselves none the more honorable. 
Enough that they are the king Lemuels and their 
queens, of the good old time gone by — kings and 
queens of Homespun, out of whom we draw our royal 
lineage. 

I have spoken of the great advance in human society, 
indicated by a transition from the dress of skins to that 
of cloth — an advance of so great dignity, that spinning 
and weaving were looked upon as a kind of fine art, or 
polite accomplishment. Another advance, and one 
that is equally remarkable, is indicated by the transi- 
tion from a dress of homespun to a dress of factory 
cloths, produced by machinery and obtained by the ex- 
changes of commerce, at home or abroad. This transi- 
tion we are now making, or rather, I should say, it is 
already so far made that the very termSj ^^ domestic 



376 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

manufacture^''^ have quite lost their meaning; being 
applied to that which is neither domestic, as being- 
made in the house, nor manufacture, as being made by 
the hands. 

This transition from mother and daughter power to 
water and steam-power is a great one, greater by far 
than many have as yet begun to conceive — one that is 
to carry with it a complete revolution of domestic life 
and social manners. If, in this transition, there is 
something to regret, there is more, I trust, to desire. 
If it carries away the old simplicity, it must also open 
higher possibilities of culture and social ornament. 
The principal danger is, that, in removing the rough 
necessities of the homespun age, it may take away also 
the severe virtues and the homely but deep and true 
piety by which, in their blessed JEruits, as we are all here 
testifying, that age is so honorably distinguished. Be 
the issue what it may, good or bad, hopeful or unhope- 
ful, it has come; it is already a fact, and the conse- 
quences must follow. 

If our sons and daughters should assemble, a hund- 
red years hence, to hold another celebration like this, 
they will scarcely be able to imagine the Arcadian pic- 
tures now so fresh in the memory of many of us, though 
to the younger part already matters of hearsay more 
than of personal knowledge or remembrance. Every 
thing that was most distinctive of the old homespun 
mode of life will then have passed away. The spin- 
ning-wheels of wool and flax, that used to buzz so fa- 
miliarly in the childish ears of some of us, will be 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 377 

heard no more forever ; seen no more, in fact, save in 
the halls of the Antiquarian Societies, where the deli- 
cate daughters will be asking, what these strange ma- 
chines are, and how they were made to go ? The huge, 
hewn-timber looms, that used to occupy a room by 
themselves in the farm-houses, will be gone, cut up for 
cord wood, and their heavy thwack, beating up the 
woof, will be heard no more by the passer by — not 
even the Antiquarian Halls will find room to harbor a 
specimen. The long strips of linen, bleaching on the 
grass, and tended by a sturdy maiden, sprinkhng them, 
each hour, from her water-can, under a broiling sun — 
thus to prepare the Sunday linen for her brothers and 
her own wedding outfit, will have disappeared, save as 
they return to fill a picture in some novel or ballad of 
the old time. The tables will be spread with some 
cunning, water-power Silesia not jet invented, or per- 
chance with some meaner fabric from the cotton mills. 
The heavy Sunday coats that grew on sheep individu- 
ally remembered — more comfortably carried, in warm 
weather, on the arm — and the specially fine-striped blue 
and white pantaloons of linen just from the loom, will 
no longer be conspicuous in processions of footmen go- 
ing to their homespun worship, but will have given 
place to processions of broadcloth gentlemen lolling in 
the upholstery of their coaches, able to worship, it may 
be, in a more cultivated figure, but not with a finer sin- 
cerity. The churches, too, that used to be simple 
brown meeting-houses covered with rived clapboards 
of oak, will have come down, mostly, from the bleak 

32'^ 



378 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

hill-tops into the close villages and populous towns that 
crowd the waterfalls and the railroads; and the old 
burial places, where the fathers sleep, will be left to 
their lonely altitude — token, shall we say, of an age 
that lived as much nearer to heaven and as much less 
under the world. The change will be complete. 
Would that we might raise some worthy monument to 
a social state, then to be passed by, worthy, in all future 
time, to be held in the dearest reverence. 

It may have seemed extravagant or fantastic, to 
some of you, that I should think to give a character of 
the century now past, under the one article of home- 
spun. It certainly is not the only, or in itself the chief 
article of distinction ; and j^et we shall find it to be a 
distinction that runs through all others, and gives a 
color to the whole economy of life and character, in the 
times of which we speak. 

Thus, if the clothing is to be manufactured in the 
house, then flax will be grown in the plowed land, and 
sheep will be raised in the pasture, and the measure of 
the flax ground, and the number of the flock, will cor- 
respond with the measure of the house market — the 
number of the sons and daughters to be clothed — so 
that the agriculture out of doors will map the family in 
doors. Then as there is no thouo^ht of obtaininof the 
articles of clothing, or dress, by exchange ; as there is 
little passing of money, and the habit of exchange is 
feebly developed ; the family will be fed on home-grown 
products, buckwheat, maize, rye, or whatever the soil 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 379 

will yield. And as carriages are a luxury introduced 
only with exchanges, the lads will be going back and 
forth to the mill on horseback, astride the fresh grists, 
to keep the mouths in supply. The meat market will 
be equally domestic, a kind of quarter-master slaughter 
and supply, laid up in the cellar, at fit times in the 
year. The daughters that, in factory days, would go 
abroad to join the female conscription of the cotton 
mill, will be kept in the home factory, or in that of 
some other family, and so in the retreats of domestic 
life. And so it will be seen, that a form of life which 
includes almost every point of economy, centers round 
the article of homespun dress, and is by that determ- 
ined. Given the fact that a people spin their own 
dress, you have in that fact a whole volume of 
characteristics. They may be shepherds dwelling in 
tents, or they may build them fixed habitations, but the 
distinction given will show them to be a people who 
are not in trade, whose life centers in the family, home- 
bred in their manners, primitive and simple in their 
character, inflexible in their piety, hospitable without 
show, intelligent without refinement. And so it will 
be seen that our homespun fathers and mothers made a 
Puritan Arcadia among these hills, answering to the 
picture which Polybius, himself an Arcadian, gave of 
his countrymen, when he said that they had, "through- 
out Grreece, a high and honorable reputation ; not only 
on account of their hospitality to strangers, and their 
benevolence towards all men, but especially on account 
of their piety towards the Divine Being." 



380 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

Thus, if we speak of what, in the polite world, is 
called societj^, our homespun age had just none of it — 
and perhaps the more of society for that reason ; be- 
cause what they had was separate from all the polite 
fictions and showy conventionalities of the world. I 
speak not here of the rude and promiscuous gatherings 
connected so often with low and vulgar excesses ; the 
military trainings, the huskings, the raisings, commonly 
ended with a wrestling match. These were their dissi- 
pations, and perhaps they were about as good as any. 
The apple-paring and quilting frolics, you may set 
down, if you will, as the polka-dances and masquerades 
of homespun. If they undertook a formal entertain- 
ment of any kind, it was commonly stiff and quite un- 
successful. But when some two queens of the spindle, 
specially fond of each other, instead of calling back and 
forth with a card-case in their hand, agreed to "join 
works," as it was called, for a week or two, in spinning, 
enlivening their talk by the rival buzz of their wheels, 
and, when the two skeins were done, spending the rest 
of the day in such kind of recreation as pleased them, 
this to them was real society, and, so far, a good type 
of all the society they had. It was the society not of 
the Nominalists, but of the Eealists ; society in or after 
work; spontaneously gathered, for the most part, in 
terms of elective affinity — foot excursions of young 
people, or excursions on horseback, after the haying, to 
the tops of the neighboring mountains ; boatings on 
the river or the lake, by moonlight, filling the wooded 
shores and the recesses of the hills with lively echoes ; 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 381 

evening schools of sacred music, in which the music is 
not so much sacred as preparing to be ; evening circles 
of young persons, falling together, as they imagine, by 
accident, round some village queen of song, and chasing 
away the time in ballads and glees so much faster than 
they wish, that just such another accident is like to 
happen soon ; neighbors called in to meet the minister 
and talk of both worlds together, and, if he is limber 
enough to suffer it, in such happy mixtures, that both 
are melted into one. 

But most of all to be remembered are those friendly 
circles, gathered so often round the winter's fire — not 
the stove, but the fire, the brightly blazing, hospitable 
fire. In the early dusk, the home circle is drawn more 
closely and quietly round it ; but a good neighbor and 
his wife drop in shortly, from over the way, and the 
circle begins to spread. Next, a few young folk from 
the other end of the village, entering in brisker mood, 
find as many more chairs set in as wedges into the pe- 
riphery to receive them also. And then a friendly 
sleigh-full of old and young, that have come down fi:*om 
the hill to spend an hour or two, spread the circle 
again, moving it still farther back from the fire; and 
the fire blazes just as much higher and more brightly, 
having a new stick added for every guest. There is no 
restraint, certainly no affectation of style. They tell 
stories, they laugh, they sing. They are serious and 
gay by turns, 6r the young folks go on with some play, 
while the fathers and mothers are discussing some hard 
point of theology in the minister's last sermon ; or per- 



382 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

haps the great danger coming to sound morals from the 
multiplication of turnpikes and newspapers! Mean- 
time the good housewife brings out her choice stock of 
home-grown exotics, gathered from three realms, 
doughnuts from the pantry, hickory-nuts from the 
chamber, and the nicest, smoothest apples from the 
cellar ; all which, including, I suppose I must add, the 
rather unpoetic beverage that gave its acid smack to 
the ancient hospitality, are discussed as freely, with no 
fear of consequences. And then, as the tall clock in 
the corner of the room ticks on majestically towards 
nine, the conversation takes, it may be, a little more se- 
rious turn, and it is suggested that a very happy even- 
ing may fitly be ended with a prayer. Whereupon 
the circle breaks up with a reverent, congratulative 
look on every face, which is itself the truest language 
of a social nature blessed in human fellowship. 

Such, in general, was the society of the homespun 
age. It was not that society that puts one in connec- 
tion with the great world of letters, or fashion, or 
power, raising as much the level of his consciousness 
and the scale and style of his action ; but it was society 
back of the world, in the sacred retreats of natural feel- 
ing, truth and piety. 

Descending from the topic of society in general to 
one more delicate, that of marriage and the tender pas- 
sion and the domestic felicities of the homespun age, 
the main distinction here to be noted is, that marriages 
were commonly contracted at a much earlier period in 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 383 

life than now. Not because the habit of the time was 
more romantic or less prudential, but because a princi- 
ple more primitive and closer to the beautiful simplicity 
of nature is yet in vogue, viz., that women are given 
by the Almighty, not so much to help their husbands 
spend a living, as to help them get one. Accordingly, 
the ministers were always very emphatic, as I remem- 
ber, in their marriage ceremonies, on the ancient idea, 
that the woman was given to the man to be a help, 
meet for him. Had they supposed, on the contrary, 
what many appear in our day to assume, that the wo- 
man is given to the man to enjoy his living, I am not 
sure that a certain way they had of adhering always to 
the reason of things, would not have set them at feud 
with the custom that requires the fee of the man, insist- 
ing that it go to the charge of the other party, where, 
in such a case, it properly belongs. Now exactly this 
notion of theirs, I confess, appears to me to be the most 
sentimental and really the most romantic notion possi- 
ble of marriage. "What more beautiful embodiment is 
there on this earth, of true sentiment, than the young 
wife who has given herself to a man in his weakness, 
to make him strong ; to enter into the hard battle of 
his life and bear the brunt of it with him ; to go down 
with him in disaster, if he fails, and cling to him for 
what he is ; to rise with him, if he rises, and share a 
two-fold joy with him in the competence achieved ; re- 
membering, both of them, how it grew by little and 
little, and by what methods of frugal industry it was 
nourished; having it also, not as his, but theirs, the 



384 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

reward of tlieir common perseverance, and the token of 
their consolidated love. And if this be the most heroic 
sentiment in the woman, it certainly was no fault in 
the man of homespun to look for it. And, in this 
view, the picture given of his suit, by a favorite poetess 
of our own, is as much deeper in poetry as it is closer 
to the simplicity of nature. 

"Behold, 
The ruddy damsel singeth at her wheel. 
While by her side the rustle lover sits, 
Perchance his shrewd eye secretly doth count 
The mass of skeins that, hanging on the wall, 
Increaseth day by day. Perchance his thought 
(For men have wiser minds than women, sure,) 
Is calculating what a thrifty wife 
The maid will make." 

Uo not accuse our rustic here too hastily, in the 
rather homely picture he makes; for sometimes it is 
the way of homely things, that their poetry is not 
seen, only because it is deepest. The main distinction 
between him and the more plausible romantic class of 
suitors is, that his passion has penetrated beyond the 
fancy, into the reason, and made the sober sense itself a 
captive. Do you say that a man has not a heart be- 
cause it is shut up in the casement of his body and is 
not seen, beating on the skin ? As little reason have 
you here to blame a fault of passion, because it throbs 
under the strong, defensive ribs of prudence. It is the 
froth of passion that makes a show so romantic on the 
soul's surfaces — the truth of it that pierces inmost re- 
alities. So, I suppose, our poetess would say that her 
young gentleman of homespun thinks of a wife, not of 



THE AGE OF HOMESPU^^ 385 

a holiday partner who may come into his living in a 
contract of expenditure. He believes in woman ac- 
cording to God's own idea, looks to her as an angel of 
help, who may join herself to him, and go down the 
rough w^ay of life as it is, to strengthen him in it by 
her sympathy, and gild its darkness, if dark it must be, 
by che light of her patience and the constancy of her 
devotion. The main difference is, that the romance 
comes out at the end and was not all expended at the 
beginning. 

The close necessities of these more primitive days 
connected many homely incidents vnth marriage, 
which, however, rather heighten the picturesque sim- 
plicity than disparage the beauty of its attractions. 
The question of the outfit, the question of ways and 
means, the homely prudence pulling back the heroics 
of faith and passion, only to make them more heroic at 
last; all these you will readily imagine. 

I suppose many of my audience may have heard of 
the distinguished Christian minister, still living in the 
embers of extreme old age, who came to the point, not 
of a flight in the winter, but of marriage, and partly by 
reason of the Revolution then in progress, could find 
no way to obtain the necessary wedding suit. Where- 
upon, the young woman's benevolent mother had some 
of her sheep sheared and sewed up in blankets to keep 
them from perishing with cold, that the much required 
felicity might be consummated. 

But the schools, — we must not pass by these, if we 

33 



386 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

are to form a truthful and sufficient picture of the 
homespun days. The school-master did not exactly go 
round the district to fit out the children's minds with 
learnings as the shoemaker often did to fit their feet 
with shoes, or the tailors to measure and cut for their 
bodies ; but, to come as near it as possible, he boarded 
round, (a custom not yet gone by,) and the wood for 
the common fire was supplied in a way equally primi- 
tive, viz., by a contribution of loads from the several 
families, according to their several quantities of child- 
hood. The children were all clothed alike in home- 
spun, and the only signs of aristocracy were, that some 
were clean and some a degree less so, some in fine 
white and striped linen, some in brown tow crash ; and, 
in particular, as I remember with a certain feeling of 
quality I do not like to express, the good fathers of 
some testified the opinion they had of their children, by 
bringing fine round loads of hickory wood to warm 
them, while some others, I regret to say, brought only 
scanty, scraggy, ill-looking heaps of green oak, white 
birch, and hemlock. Indeed, about all the bickerings 
of quality among the children centered in the quality 
of the wood-pile. There was no complaint, in those 
days, of the want of ventilation ; for the large open fire- 
place held a considerable fraction of a cord of wood, 
and the windows took in just enough air to supply the 
combustion, Besides, the bigger lads were occasionally 
ventilated, by being sent out to cut wood enough to 
keep the fire in action. The seats were made of the 
outer slabs from the saw-mill, supported by slant legs 



on 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 88 

driven into and a proper distance throngli augur lioles, 
and planed smooth on the top b}^ the rather tardy pro- 
cess of friction. But the spelling ^vent on bravely, and 
we ciphered away again and again, always till we got 
through Loss and Gain. The more advanced of ns, 
too, m.ade light work of Lindley Murray, and went on 
to the parsing, finally, of extracts from Shakspeare and 
Milton, till some of us began to think we had mastered 
their tough sentences in a more consequential sense of 
the term than was exactly true. 0, 1 remember, (about 
the remotest thing I can remember.) that low seat, too 
high, nevertheless, to allow the feet to touch the floor, 
and that friendly teacher who had the address to start 
a first feelins: of enthusiasm and awaken the first sense 
of power. He is living still, and whenever I think of 
him, he rises up to me in the far background of mem- 
ory, as bright as if he had worn the seven stars in his 
hair. (I said he is living ; jes^ he is here to-day, God 
bless him !) How many others of you that are here as- 
sembled, recall these little primitive universities of 
homespun, where your mind was born, with a similar 
feeling of reverence and homely satisfaction. Perhaps 
you remember, too, with a pleasure not less genuine, 
that you received the classic discipline of the university 
proper, under a dress of homespun, to be graduated, at 
the close, in the joint honors of broadcloth and the 
parchment. 

Passing from the school to the church, or rather I 
should say, to the meeting-house — -good translation. 



388 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

whetlier meant or not, of what is older and more vener- 
able than churchy viz., synagogue — here, again, you 
meet the picture of a sturdy homespun worship. Prob- 
ably it stands on some hill, midwaj^ between three or 
four valleys, whither the tribes go up to worship, and, 
when the snow-drifts are deepest, go literally from 
strength to strength. There is no furnace or stove, 
save the foot-stoves that are filled from the fires of the 
neighboring houses, and brought in partly as a rather 
formal compliment to the delicacy of the tender sex, 
and sometimes because they are really wanted. The 
dress of the assembly is mostly homespun, indicating 
only slight distinctions of quality in the worshipers. 
Thev are seated accordinor to ag^e, the old kino- Lemuels 
and their queens in front, near the pulpit, and the 
younger Lemuels farther back, inclosed in pews, sitting 
back to back, impounded, all, for deep thought and 
spiritual digestion ; only the deacons, sitting close un- 
der the pulpit, by themselves, to receive, as their dis- 
tinctive honor, the more perpendicular droppings of 
the word. Clean round the front of the gallery is 
drawn a single row of choir, headed by the key-pipe, in 
the center. The pulpit is overhung by an august 
wooden canopy, called a sounding-board — study gen- 
eral, of course, and first lesson of mystery to the eyes 
of the children, until what time their ears are opened to 
understand the spoken mysteries. 

There is no affectation of seriousness in the assembly, 
no mannerism of worship ; some would say too little of 
the manner of worship. They think of nothing, in 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUK. 389 

fact, save what meets their intelligence and enters into 
them by that method. They appear like men who 
have a digestion for strong meat, and have no concep- 
tion that trifles more delicate can be of any account to 
feed the system. Nothing is dull that has the matter 
in it, nothing long that has not exhausted the matter. 
If the minister speaks in his great coat and thick gloves 
or mittens, if the howling blasts of winter drive in 
across the assembly fresh streams of ventilation that 
move the hair upon their heads, they are none the less 
content, if only he gives them good strong exercise. 
Under their hard, and, as some would say, stolid faces, 
great thoughts are brewing, and these keep them warm. 
Free-will, fixed fate, foreknowledge absolute, trinity, 
redemption, special grace, eternity — give them any 
thing high enough, and the tough muscle of their in- 
ward man will be climbing sturdily into it ; and if they 
go away having something to think of, they have had 
a good day. A perceptible glow will kindle in their 
hard faces, only when some one of the chief apostles, a 
Day, a Smith, or a Bellamy, has come to lead them up 
some higher pinnacle of thought, or pile upon their 
sturdy mind some heavier w^eight of argument — faint- 
ing never under any weight, even that which, to the 
foreign critics of the discourses preached by them and 
others of their day, it seems impossible for any, the 
most cultivated audience in the world, to have sup- 
ported. These royal men of homespun — how great a 
thing to them was religion ! The district school was 
there, the great Bellamy is here among the highest 

33* 



890 THE AGE OF HOMESPUK. 

peaks and solitudes of divine government, and between 
is close living and hard work, but they are kings alike 
in all ! 

True there was a rigor in their piety, a want of 
gentle feeling; their Christian graces were cast-iron 
shapes, answering with a hard metallic ring. But they 
stood the rough wear of life none the less durably for 
the excessive hardness of their temperament, kept their 
families and communities none the less truly, though 
it may be less benignl}^, under the sense of God and re- 
ligion. If we find something to modify or soften, in 
their over-rigid notions of Christian living, it is yet 
something to know that what we are they have made 
us, and that, when we have done better for the ages 
that come after us, we shall have a more certain right 
to blame their austerities. 

View them as we may, there is yet, and always will 
be, something magnificent in their stern, practical fidel- 
ity to their principles. If they believed it to be more 
scriptural and Christian to begin their Sunday, not 
with the western, but with the Jewish and other east- 
ern nations, at the sunset on Saturday, their practice 
did not part company with their principles — it was sun- 
down at sundown, not somewhere between that time 
and the next morning. Thus, being dispatched, when 
a lad, one Saturday afternoon in the winter, to bring 
home a few bushels of apples engaged of a farmer a 
mile distant, I remember how the careful, exact man 
looked first at the clock, then out the w^indow at the 
sun, and turning to me said, ^^I can not measure out 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 391 

the apples in time for yoii to get home before sundown, 
you must come again Monday;" then how I went 
home, venting my boyish impatience in words not ex- 
actly respectful, assisted by the sunlight playing still 
upon the eastern hills, and got for my comfort a very 
unaccountably small amount of specially silent sympa- 
thy. 

I have never yet ascertained whether that refusal was 
exactly justified by the patriarchal authorities appealed 
to, or not. Be that as it may, have what opinion of it 
you will, I confess to you, for one, that I recall the 
honest, faithful days of homespim represented in it, 
days when men's lives went by their consciences, as 
their clocks did by the sun, with a feeling of profound- 
est reverence. It is more than respectable — ^it is sub- 
lime. If we find a more liberal way, and think we are 
safe in it, or if we are actually so, we can never yet 
break loose from a willing respect to this inflexible, 
majestic paternity of truth and godliness. 

Eegarding, now, the homespun age as represented in 
these pictures of the social and religious life, we need, 
in order to a full understanding or conception of the 
powers and the possibilities of success embodied in it, 
to go a step farther; to descend into the practical 
struggle of common life, and see how the muscle of en- 
ergy and victory is developed, under its close necessities. 

The sons and daughters grew up, all, as you will 
perceive, in the closest habits of industry. The keen 
jocky way of whittling out a living by small bargains 



892 THE AGE OF HOMESPUX. 

sharply turned, wiiicTi many suppose to be an essential 
characteristic of the Yankee race, is yet no proper in- 
bred distinction, but only a casual result, or incident, 
that pertains to the transition period between the small, 
stringent way of life in the previous times of home- 
production, and the new age of trade. In these olden 
times, these genuine days of homespun, they supposed, 
in their simplicity, that thrift represented work, and 
looked about seldom for any more delicate and sharper 
way of getting on. They did not call a man's property 
his fortune^ but they spoke of one or another as being 
worth so much ; conceiving that he had it laid up as the 
reward or fruit of his deservings. The house was a 
factory on the farm, the farm a grower and producer 
for the house. The exchanges went on briskly enough, 
but required neither money nor trade. No affectation 
of polite living, no languishing airs of delicacy and soft- 
ness in-doors, had begun to make the fathers and sons 
impatient of hard work out of doors, and set them at 
contriving some easier and more plausible way of liv- 
ing. Their very dress represented work, and they 
went out as men whom the wives and daughters had 
dressed for work ; facing all weather, cold and hot, wet 
and dry, wrestling with the plow on the stony-sided 
hills, digging out the rocks by hard lifting and a good 
many very practical experiments in mechanics, dressing 
the flax, threshing the rye, dragging home, in the deep 
snows, the great wood-pile of the 3^ear's consumption, 
and then, when the day is ended — having no loose 
money to spend in taverns — taking their recreation, all 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 393 

together, in reading, or singing, or happy talk, or silent 
looking in the fire, and finally in sleep — to rise again, 
with the sun, and pray oyer the family Bible for just 
such another good day as the last. And so they liyed, 
working out, each year, a little adyance of thrift, just 
within the line of comfort. 

The picture still holds, in part, though greatly modi- 
fied by the softened manner of in-door life, and the 
multiplied agencies of emigration, trayel, trade and ma- 
chinery. It is, on the whole, a hard and oyer-seyere 
picture, and yet a picture that embodies the highest 
points of merit, connects the noblest results of character. 
Out of it, in one yiew, come all the successes we com- 
memorate on this festiye occasion. 

No mode of life was eyer more expensiye ; it was 
life at the expense of labor too stringent to allow the 
highest culture and the most proper enjoyment. Eyen 
the dress of it was more expensiye than we shall eyer 
see again. Still it was a life of honesty and simple con- 
tent and sturdy yictory. Immoralities, that rot down 
the yigor and humble the consciousness of families, 
were as much less frequent, as they had less thought of 
adyenture, less to do with trayel and trade and money, 
and were closer to nature and the simple life of home. 

K they were sometimes drudged by their oyer-intense 
labor, still they were kept by it in a generally rugged 
state, both of body and mind. They kept a good di- 
gestion, which is itself no small part of a character. 
The mothers spent their neryous impulse on their mus- 
cles, and had so much less need of keeping down the 



394 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

excess, or calming the unspent lightning, by doses of 
anodyne. In the play of the wheel, they spun fibre 
too within, and in the weaving, wove it close and firm. 
They realized, to the full, the poet's picture of the 
maiden, who made a robust, happy life of peace, by the 
industry of her hands. 

"She never feels the spleen's imagined pains, 
Kor melancholy stagnates in her veins ; 
She never loses life in thoughtless ease, 
Nor on the velvet couch invites disease ; 
Her homespun dress, in simple neatness lies, 
And for no glaring equipage she sighs ; 
No midnight masquerade her beauty "v\'ears, 
And health, not paint, the foding bloom repairs." 

Be it true, as it may, that the mothers of the home- 
spun age had a severe limit on their culture and accom- 
plishments. Be it true that we demand a delicacy and 
elegance of manners impossible to them, under the 
rugged necessities they bore. Still there is, after all, 
something very respectable in good health, and a great 
many graces play in its look that we love to stud}', 
even if there be a little show of toughness in their 
charms. How much is there, too, in the sublime 
motherhood of health! Hence come, not always, I 
know, but oftenest, the heroes and the great minds 
gifted with volume and power and balanced for the 
manly virtues of truth, courage, persistency, and all 
sorts of victory. 

It was also a great point, in this homespun mode of 
life, that it imparted exactly what many speak of only 
with contempt, a closely girded habit of economy. 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 895 

Harnessed, all together, into the producing process, 
young and old, male and female, from the boy that 
rode the plow-horse, to the grandmother knitting under 
her spectacles, they had no conception of squandering 
lightly what they all had been at work, thread by thread, 
and grain by grain, to produce. They knew too ex- 
actly what every thing cost, even small things, not to 
husband them carefuUj^. Men of patrimony in the 
great world, therefore, noticing their small way in 
trade, or expenditure, are ready, as we often see, to 
charge them with meanness — simply because they 
knew things only in the small ; or, what is not far dif- 
ferent, because they were too simple and rustic to have 
any conception of the big operations by which other 
men are wont to get their money without earning it, 
and lavish the more freely because it was not earned. 
Still this knowing life only in the small, it will be 
found, is really any thing but meanness. 

Probably enough the man who is heard threshing in 
his bam of a winter evening, by the light of a lantern, 
(I knew such an example,) will be seen driving his 
team next day, the coldest day of the year, through the 
deep snow to a distant wood-lot, to draw a load for a 
present to his minister. So the housewife that higgles 
for a half hour with the merchant over some small 
trade, is yet one that will keep watch, not unlikelj^, 
when the school-master, boarding round the district, 
comes to some hard quarter, and commence asking him 
to dinner, then to tea, then to stay over night, and lit- 
erally boarding him, till the hard quarter is passed. 



396 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

Who now, in the great world of money, will do, not to 
say the same, as much, proportionally as much, in any 
of the pure hospitalities of life? 

Besides, what sufficiently disproves any real mean- 
ness, it will be found that children brought up, in this 
way, to know things in the small — what they cost and 
what is their value — have, in just that fact, one of the 
best securities of character and most certain elements of 
power and success in life ; because they expect to get 
on by small advances followed up and saved by others, 
not by sudden leaps of fortune that despise the slow but 
surer methods of industry and merit. When the hard, 
wiry-looking patriarch of homespun, for example, sets 
off for Hartford, or Bridgeport, to exchange the little 
surplus of his year's production, carrjdng his provision 
with him and the fodder of his team, and taking his 
boy along to show him the great world, j'ou may laugh 
at the simplicity, or pity, if you will, the sordid look of 
the picture ; but, five or ten years hence, this boy will 
probably enough be found in College, digging out the 
cent's worths of his father's money in hard study ; and 
some twenty years later, he will be returning, in his hon- 
ors, as the celebrated Judge, or Governor, or Senator and 
public orator, from some one of the great States of the 
republic, to bless the sight once more of that venerated 
pair who shaped his beginnings, and planted the small 
seeds of his future success. Small seeds, you may have 
thought, of meanness; but now they have grown up 
and blossomed into a large-minded life, a generous pub- 
lic devotion, and a free benevolence to mankind. 



THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 397 

And just here, I am persuaded, is the secret, in no 
small degree, of the very peculiar success that has dis- 
tinguished the sons of Connecticut, and, not least, those 
of Litchfield County, in their migration to other States. 
It is because they have gone out in the wise economy 
of a simple, homespun training, expecting to get on in 
the world by merit and patience, and by a careful hus- 
banding of small advances ; secured in their virtue, by 
just that which makes their perseverance successful. 
For the men who see the great in the small, and go on 
to build the great by small increments, will commonly 
have an exact conscience too that beholds great princi- 
ples in small things, and so form a character of integ- 
rity before both God and man, as solid and massive as 
the outward successes they conquer. The great men 
who think to be great in general, having yet nothing 
great in particular, are a much more windy affair. 

It is time now that I should draw my discourse, al- 
ready too far protracted, to a close. Some of you, I 
suppose, will hardly call it a sermon. I only think it 
very faithfully answers to the text, or rather to the 
whole chapter from which the text is taken ; and that 
sometimes we get the purest and most wholesome les- 
sons of Christian fidelity, by going a little way back 
from matters of s|)iritual experience, carrying the wise 
Proverbs with us, to look on the prudentials of the 
world of prudence, and watch the colors that play upon 
the outer surfaces of life and its common affairs. 

I have wished, in particular, to bring out an impres- 

34 



398 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN * 

sion of the unrecorded history of the times gone by. 
We must not think on such an occasion as this that the 
great men have made the history. Eather is it the his- 
tory that has made the men. It is the homespun many, 
the simple Christian men and women of the century 
gone by, who bore their life-struggle faithfully in these 
valleys and among these hills, and who now are sleep- 
ing in the untitled graves of Christian worth and piety. 
These are they whom we are most especially to honor, 
and it is good for us all to see and know, in their ex- 
ample, how nobly fruitful and beneficent that virtue 
may be, which is too common to be distinguished, and 
is thought of only as the worth of unhistoric men. 
Worth indeed it is, that worth which, being common, 
is the substructure and the prime condition of a happy, 
social state, and of all the honors that dignify its his- 
tory — worth, not of men only, but quite as much of 
women ; for you have seen, at every turn of my sub- 
ject, how the age gone by receives a distinctive char- 
acter from the queens of the distaff and the loom, and 
their princely motherhood. Let no woman imagine 
that she is without consequence, or motive to excel- 
lence, because she is not conspicuous. Oh, it is the 
greatness of woman that she is so much like the great 
powers of nature, back of the noise and clatter of the 
world's affairs, tempering all things mith her benign 
influence only the more certainly because of her si- 
lence, greatest in her beneficence because most remote 
from ambition, most forgetful of herself and fame; a 
better nature in the world that only waits to bless it, 



* THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 399 

and refuses to be known save in the successes of others, 
whom she makes conspicuous; satisfied most, in the 
honors that come not to her — that ^'Her husband is 
known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders 
of the land." 

Assembled here, now, as we are, from all parts of 
this great country, most of us strangers heretofore to 
each other, it is yet our common joy and pride that so 
many of you return from stations of honor, which are 
the tokens of your success, appearing among us in 
names to which you have added weight and luster 
abroad, and so reflected praise on the home of your na- 
tivity and nurture. Our welcome to you is none the 
less hearty, none the less grateful I am sure to you, 
that we give not all the credit of your successes to you. 
We distinguish in you still the seeds you carried away. 
We congratulate you ; we honor those who made you 
what you are. Or if we say that we honor you, we 
bow our heads in reverence to those fathers and moth- 
ers less distinguished in name, it may be, and those vir- 
tues of common life and industry which have yielded 
both us and you, the social honors we rejoice in, on 
this festive occasion. In this latter sentiment I think 
you will join me, wishing, if possible, to escape the re- 
membrance of yourselves, and pay some fit honors to 
the majesty of worth, in a parentage ennobled in your- 
selves and sanctified by the silence of the places where 
they are resting from their labors. It will be strange, 
too, when your minds are softened by these tender re- 
membrances, if your thoughts do not recur instinctively, 



400 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. ^ 

to what is the tenderest of all sentiments, that which 
remembers the lessons and the gentle cares of a faithful 
motherhood. Then let this voice of nature speak, and 
let the inward testimony of our hearts' feeling hail the 
witness of the concourse here assembled, as a welcome 
and sublime fulfillment of the word — ••Her children 
arise up and call her blessed." Or if we exult, as we 
must, in reviewing the honors that have crowned the 
one century of our simple history as a people, let our 
joy be a filial sentiment, saying still, in the triumphant 
words that close our song — '' Give her of the fruits of 
her hands, and let her own works praise her in the 
gates!" 

Men and women of Litchfield County, such has been 
the past ; a good and honorable past ! We give it over 
to you — the future is with you. It must, we know, be 
different, and it will be what vou make it. Be faithful 
to the sacred trust God is this day placing in your 
hands. 

One thing, at least, I hope; that, in these illustra- 
tions, I have made some just impression on you all of 
the dignitv of work. How orreat an honor it is 
for the times gone by, that when so many schemes are 
on foot, as now, to raise the weak ; when the friends of 
the dejected classes of the world are proposing even to 
reorganize society itself for their benefit, trying to hu- 
manize punishments, to kindle hope in disability, and 
nurse depravity into a condition of comfort — a distinc- 
tion how maomificent I that our fathers and mothers of 
the century past had, in truth, no dejected classes, no 



* THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 401 

disability, only here and there a drone of idleness, or a 
sporadic case of vice and poverty; excelling, in the 
picture of social comfort and well-being actually real- 
ized, the most romantic visions of our new seers. 
They want a reorganization of society! — something 
better than the Christian gospel and the Christian fam- 
ily state ! — some community in hollow-square, to pro- 
tect them and coax them up into a life of respect, and 
help them to be men ! No, they did not even so much 
as want the patronage of a bank of savings, to encour- 
age them and take the wardship of their cause. They 
knew how to make their money, and how to invest it, 
and take care of it, and make it productive ; how to 
build, and plant, and make sterility fruitful, and con- 
quer all the hard weather of life. Their producing pro- 
cess took every thing at a disadvantage ; for they had no 
capital, no machinery, no distribution of labor, nothing 
but wild forest and rock ; but they had mettle enough 
in their character to conquer their defects of outfit and 
advantage. They sucked honey ou-t of the rock, and 
oil out of the flinty rock. Nay, they even seemed to 
want something a little harder than nature in her softer 
moods could yield them. Their ideal of a Goshen they 
located, not in the rich alluvion of some fertile Nile, 
but upon the crest of the world, somewhere between 
the second and third heaven where Providence itself 
grows cold, and there, making warmth by their exer- 
cise and their prayers, they prepared a happier state of 
competence and wealth, than the Goshen of the sunny 
Nile ever saw. Your condition will hereafter be soft- 

34--^ 



402 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 

ened, and your comforts multiplied. Let your culture 
be as much advanced. But let no delicate spirit that 
despises work grow up in your sons and daughters. 
Make these rocky hills smooth their faces and smile 
under your industry. Let no absurd ambition tempt 
you to imitate the manners of the great world of fash- 
ion, and rob you thus of the respect and dignity that 
pertain to manners properly your own. Maintain, 
above all, your religious exactness. Think what is 
true, and then respect yourselves in living exactly what 
you think. Fear God and keep his commandments, as 
your godly fathers and mothers did before you, and 
found, as we have seen, to be the beginning of wisdom. 
As their graves are with you, so be that faith in God 
which ennobled their lives and glorified their death an 
inheritance in you, and a legacy transmitted by you to 
your children. 



XI. 

THE DAY OP ROADS* 



** In the days of Shamgar tlie son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the 
highways were unoccupied and the travelers walked through by-ways." 
— Judges V. 6. 

I HOPE it will not be deemed a conceit, if I occupy 
you, to-day, with a discourse on Eoads. It certainly 
will not, if I am able to collect about the subject those 
illustrations which are necessary to its social and relig- 
ious import. 

The Eoad is that physical sign, or symbol, by which 
you will best understand any age or people. If they 
have no roads, they are savages ; for the Eoad is a cre- 
ation of man and a type of civilized society. If law is 
weak and society insecure, you will see men perched in 
castles, on the top of inaccessible rocks, or gathered 
into walled cities, spending all their strength, not in 
opening Eoads, but in fortifying themselves against the 
access of danger. The draw-bridge is up, the portcullis 
down, and sentinels are mounted on the ramparts, care- 
fully studying every footman or horseman that turns 
the corner of a wood, or gallops across the distant plain. 

* Delivered at the North Church, Hartford, on 'the Annual Thanks- 
giving, A. D. 1846. 



404 THE DAT OF ROADS. 

Wheeled vehicles are seldom seen, and roads are rather 
obstructed than opened. Or if you inquire after com- 
merce, look at the Eoads ; for Eoads are the ducts of 
trade. If you wish to know whether society is stag- 
nant, learning scholastic, religion a dead formalitj^, you 
may learn something by going into universities and li- 
braries ; something also by the work that is doing on 
cathedrals and churches, or in them; but quite as 
much by looking at the Eoads. For if there is any mo- 
tion in society, the Eoad, which is the symbol of motion, 
will indicate the fact. When there is activity, or enlarge- 
ment, or a liberalizing spirit of any kind, then there is 
intercourse and travel, and these require Eoads. So if 
there is any kind of advancement going on, if new ideas 
are abroad and new hopes rising, then you will see 
it by the roads that are building. Nothing makes an 
inroad without making a Eoad. All-creative action, 
w^hether in government, industry, thought, or religion, 
creates Eoads. 

In the days of Shamgar and the Judges, there was no 
law or security. Every one did what was right in his 
own eyes, that is, what was wrong in the eyes of every 
body else. Gangs of robbers and marauders prowled 
over the country, stripping every passenger, and rush- 
ing into the gate of every walled town, if they could 
find it open. This middle age, continuing for two 
hundred years, was also the dark age of Israel, and 
was to that nation what the dark ages, so-called, have 
been to Christendom. As there was no securitj^, there 
was, of course, iro commerce or trade. The highways, 



THE DAY OF EOADS. 405 

therefore, were ^* unoccupied," that is, unused ; the public 
roads, such as they had, were blocked up and made im- 
passable, and the bridges torn down, to prevent hostile 
incursions upon the towns. The ''travelers," therefore, 
or more literally, the "footers," for there was no travel 
save on foot, walked through by-ways or crooked and 
obscure trails — picking out their way across mountain 
passes, through glens and over the fields. What a pic- 
ture of society have we here — the whole book of Judges 
in a sentence ! 

So things continued till the reign of law began to be 
established under Samuel and David. This latter 
finally went so far as to open a commercial treaty with 
Hiram of Tyre ; and as the object of the treaty was to 
procure timber for the temple, we see that a commercial 
road was opened leading down to Tyre. Another must 
have been constructed, leading off to Lebanon. When 
Solomon came to the throne, a new age was dawning. 
He was, moreover, a liberal and cultivated man himself, 
acquainted with all the foreign courts about him, and 
he went into relations of active intercourse with them. 
He opened a lively and lucrative commerce with the 
East, with Egypt and the Eed Sea, and sent out his 
ships of commerce even to Spain. He had also four- 
teen hundred chariots of war, which are also an indica- 
tion that he had Eoads leading in eyerj direction. I 
do not say that this was an age of the highest civiliza- 
tion, or the greatest public happiness. Some mournful 
consequences were to be produced by this very activity 
of intercourse and travel*. Still it wa^ the splendid age 



406 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

of Israel — the age of new hope, excitement, wealth and 
power. Therefore it was the age of Eoads ; and Eoads 
were the type of the age ; travel the spring of its activ- 
ity. Now it was that philosophy and learning of every 
kind most flourished, now that architecture began to be 
cultivated, now that religion displayed the greatest zeal 
for expense, built its chief monument, and enacted its 
most public and gorgeous solemnities. 

Could we restore the lost history of Egypt, we should 
find that the splendid age of that buried realm of splen- 
dor and power, the age of the pyramids, was an age of 
Eoads. The hundred gates, too, of Thebes would be 
seen pouring out their vehicles of commerce and travel, 
and their chariots of war rolling up the dust of the 
plain, till they are lost in the smoky horizon on every 
side. Now, Egypt is more like Israel in the days of 
Shamgar. 

The splendid age of the Eoman empire is known to 
have been an age of Eoads. The Appian Way, lead- 
ing off to Brundusium, on the southeastern coast of 
the peninsula, about four hundred' miles, paved with 
hexagonal blocks of stone laid in cement, was not the 
only one. This was built three hundred years before 
Christ. As the empire grew in power and splendor, 
Eoads multiplied ; till, in the age of the Antonines, one 
might stand in the forum between highways coming in 
from the north and the south, the east and the west, 
and see travel pouring in from Scotland on one side, 
and Antioch on the other. Mountains were perforated, 
rivers bridged, milestones set up, and the roads them- 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 407 

selves were hardened to a floor, macadamized before 
the time of McAdam, by sand, gravel and cement. 
All the distant provinces and cities were united, in this 
manner, and regular posts established. Beginning at 
Scotland, the Eoman could travel on by post to Anti- 
och, a distance of nearly four thousand miles, inter- 
rupted only by the passage of the English Channel and 
the Hellespont. And it is actually related, as one of 
the memorabilia of the age, that one Csesarius went 
post from Antioch to Constantinople, six hundred and 
sixty-five miles, in less than six days. But the power 
of Eome was in its arms, and these Eoads were built 
rather as the bonds of conquest and means of military 
subjection, than for the benefit of industry or the social 
advancement of the empire. Still they represent activ- 
ity. When these Eoads are building, something is go- 
ing on — it is no stagnant age. It is also to be re- 
marked, that while the Eoads consolidated the empire, 
they also assisted the civilization and conversion of the 
nations through which they passed. Christianity w^ent 
forth on the Eoads, as a traveler and a soldier, to con- 
solidate her empire. 

Again, it is known that the crusades gave birth to 
modern commerce, and that commerce gave that spring 
to wealth and refinement which erected the cathedrals 
of Flanders, Germany, France and England. The ca- 
thedral age was an age of Eoads and of travel. And it 
would be well if those who boast the glory and relig- 
ious grandeur of this wonderful age, contrasting it with 
our shallow age of speed and trade and travel, would 



408 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

remember that Koads built the cathedrals. Possibly 
we may have something to build, quite as admirable as 
these, though something certainly a little different from 
these. 

For, now, it is clear enough that a new age of Eoads 
has come, and the world is waking up to do something. 
The days of Shamgar the son of Anath are ended, and 
the people of the walled towns and castles are coming 
out to build Roads. Thej^ build not merely Roads of 
earth and stone, as of old, but thej^ build iron Roads. 
And not content with horses of flesh, they are building 
horses also of iron, such as never faint or lose their 
breath, and go, withal, somewhat faster even than the 
Roman post — not to speak of the immense loads they 
whirl over mountains and through them, from mart to 
mart and from one shore to another. We have in- 
vented, too, another kind of sail, which runs against 
the wind or away from it, stemming tides and climbing 
currents, making Roads through oceans, and changing 
the great inland sluices of the world into paths of com- 
merce and travel. And where we can not go bodily to 
speak ourselves, we send out newspapers as the posts 
of thought, setting every man to talking with every 
other, so that all which the great good men are doing 
and planning is known to every body, and all that op- 
pressors and knaves do, or would do, is exposed, exe- 
crated, and if anv shame is left, shamed out of the 
world. Nor is this all ; we have produced still another 
new kind of Road, which outstrips all the horses, 
whether of flesh or of iron — a Road for Thought; 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 409 

which when we get complete, the world will become a 
vast sensorium, spinning out its nerves of cognition 
and feeling, and keeping the whole body apprised, in 
every limb and member, of what the electric organ 
meditates. Whatever else we may think, or hope, or 
fear, it is quite certain that this is an age of Eoads. If 
the Shamgars of conservatism, looking through the loop- 
holes of their walled towns and seeing so many people 
out whirling through the air, are frightened by the 
sight, fearing lest all the walls of stability and defense 
are going to break way, still the Eoads will be built 
and the motion will go on. Wise or unwise, the world 
has taken it into its head to have Eoads and there is a 
destiny in it, against which remonstrance is unavailable. 
Indeed, they need not go to their battlements or loop- 
holes to see it; for this destiny, good or bad, has al- 
ready broken through their walls. Many a time, 
within the last year, have I seen the Eailroad forcing 
the parapets and buttresses of walled cities and sending 
in the iron horse of travel, in thunder and smoke, to its 
very center. I never knew so well before w^hat that 
word destiny means ; for here I have seen the new age 
breaking through the old ; power reversing all its in- 
tents; and human society, by some fiat of God, com- 
pelled to unwrap the coil of its jealousies and fears, to 
seek, as a good, what it repelled as an evil; and the 
children moved to cast aAvay, for their life's sake, what 
their fathers erected to save their bodies. 

Acknowledging, then, that there is some destiny at 
work in this matter of Eoads and of travel, let us study 

85 



-ilO THE DAY OF ROADS. 

into it, a little, and see if Tve can gather wliat it means. 
It is not, as all history informs us, a social accident, a 
something existing by itself It has its causes and will 
have its consequences. It is the indication of some- 
thing existing, and of something to come. Some will 
say that it indicates a mechanical age ; an age of utility, 
destitute of great sentiments, without genius, or faith, 
or reverence to the past, hurrying on to a sordid, mea- 
ger end, in moral and political anarchy, and atheistic 
barbarism. Doubtless we are making abundance of 
cheap cotton cloth- and democracy, they will say, but 
where is that sense of authority and fine courtesy, 
which prevailed in the days of chivalry ? where, above 
all, that sublime reverence for religion, that genius con- 
secrated to religion, which casts its shadow on our de- 
generate heads, in the noble structures of the middle 
age? Xow the truth is, that these worshipers of au- 
thority, these gothic-mad moderns, who see nothing 
preparing, in our times, but money and democracy, 
would themselves have resisted all which gave birth to 
the very monuments they worship ; for, as I have al- 
ready intimated, it was a Eoad-making age that built 
them — an age of revived activity and commerce. And 
the very struggle of that day was to get the Roads ; for 
it was the want of Eoads that constituted the chief ob- 
stacle to commerce and delayed, so long, its appearance 
among the European nations. They knew no other 
state than a state of seclusion. Commerce was even a 
thing not yet conceived. Even the kings of England 
had their garments made by women on their farms. 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 411 

And when a certain ambassador, at the court of Otho, 
boasted that the Lombard people had as fine clothes as 
the Greeks, and it was ascertained that the Lombards 
actually got them from their markets, through Venice 
and Amalfi, they were greatly exasperated that foreign- 
ers should presume to buy their clothes ! So little con- 
ception had they of trade, that purchase was an affront 
and sale a treason ! At length, the nations began to 
taste the benefits to be gained by commerce. But it 
was, at first, a stolen taste, and was gotten only hj ex- 
treme hazard. In England and Germany, for example, 
the nobles sallied out of their castles to rob every trav- 
eler and merchant who Avould cross their domain. 
These seats of chivalry were maintained by robbery, 
and it was impossible to transport merchandise, even 
for short distances, in safet}^ The Hanseatic League, 
comprising the four commercial cities of German}^, was 
organized for the very purpose of securing the mer- 
chants against these land pirates, and putting an end to 
the days of Shamgar. Although trade began to get a 
footing in England, and this kind of robbery ceased, 
still every noble barbarian who had a castle, being the 
owner of the Eoad on his domain, carried on a robbery 
in the shape of tolls, at his borders, his bridges and his 
market, which was nearly as bad as the more violent 
method. To secure an open Eoad, therefore, was still 
the problem of the age, and one of the first laws jDassed 
by the Parliament was a law to excuse the merchant 
from going out of his way to pa}^ toll, when he could 
cross, at a ford, or in some nearer way, to better advan- 



412 THE DAY OF HOADS. 

tage. At length, the Eoads were opened, trade flowed 
in, wealth increased, the public mind was liberalized, 
and a spirit of taste and refinement grew up. And 
then, at last, the great cathedrals began to lift their tur- 
rets unto the sky. Meantime, how many of the fine 
conservatives of that age, do you suppose, were lament- 
ing over it as a degenerate, mercenary age, an age of 
merchandise and money, raising up a class of upstarts 
to rival the fine old nobility and destroy ancient pre- 
cedence. Besides, it was setting a strong current to- 
ward democracy, which was even worse. For, not 
only was Venice, at length, forbidden by the Holy See 
to kidnap Christian people and sell them as slaves to 
the Saracens, in which her trade begun ; not only did 
the Irish council determine to import no more English 
children, as slaves, which had been a regular trade be- 
fore, but the serf on every estate began to be looked 
upon as a man, labor rose to higher price than it com- 
mands even now, and sentiments began to work in the 
heart of the English nation, which did not stay their 
action, till every trace of serfdom was done awa}^ 
Xow in this former age of Eoads, (for I know not how 
to describe it by any better epithet,) there is some look- 
ing towards utility certainl}', and also toward democ- 
rac}' ; and yet even a better result than the cathedrals 
grew out of it, viz., an elevation of character and virtue 
— a religious elevation. There was more manhood, as 
there was more humanity; more piety, as there was 
less robbery ; barbarism drew back, as comfort, wealth 
and virtue multiplied; genius came forth to make a 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 41 



D 



thank-offering for its freedom, sliot up its holy grati- 
tude into vaulted aisles and sky -piercing pinnacles, and 
left the cathedrals standing as so many monuments of 
thanksgiving for Eoads ! 

An age of Eoads, then, is not, of course, an age of 
moral decay and dissipation, even though it has some 
looking towards utility and equality. Possibly it may 
not always end in gothic architecture, possibly there 
may be other kinds of good, in the universe, beside 
gothic architecture. Pardon me, if I suggest the possi- 
bility, that God may have something better and nobler 
than this in store for the coming ages ; for though some 
persons, gifted with a dull imagination, are ever assum- 
ing that facts are the measure of God's possibilities, and 
that no good is to be hoped for, save the good that has 
been, it is yet remarkable that new kinds of good do 
appear in human history, and there may be some yet to 
appear, which have not been. 

I think, too, that we can detect several new elements 
at work, in our age of Eoads, which are not altogether 
evil, or destitute of promise. Travel and motion of 
every kind are signs of life, and life implies the quick- 
ening presence of new ideas ; for a dead body can as 
easily support a motion, as a dead idea. I shall be able 
too, I think, to show you, in a brief review, that, with 
all other kinds of travel in this age, new ideas are com- 
ing into action and traveling also. Physical improve- 
ment associates moral, and moral stimulates physical. 
There is a reciprocal action between commerce and 
thought, thought and society, society and religion. 

35- 



414 THE DAY OF KOADS. 

Improved Eoads connect beneficent inroads, and the 
subjugation of matter associates the subjugation of so- 
cial and political evil. Accordingly, new ideas, such 
as these which follow, are waking into life and pressing 
their way into the heart of the world — peace between 
nations and a reciprocal interest ; * religious and civil 
liberty; man as man, to be protected, educated, ele- 
vated by equal laws ; Christian light, unity and benefi- 
cence. 

An American sets off to travel, a few months, in 
Europe, and see what can be seen with his eyes. His 
mipressions will of course be superficial and, in many 
respects, erroneous. He lands, we will suppose, in 
England. The first thing he discovers is, that England 
is a land of Eoads, new Eoads, and that every body 
there, as here, is in motion. The whole map of the 
island is covered with a fine net- work of rails and mac- 
adamized Eoads, and jet Eoad-making is but just be- 
gun. And, among all the English whirling over these 
Eoads, he meets, every few hours, one of his own coun- 
trymen, till he begins to think that his countrymen are 
waging a crusade of travel. In the mail-coaches he 
travels ten or eleven miles an hour and upon the rail- 
road from thirty to sixty. He goes into Scotland, he 
pierces the Highlands ; and here he hears the rolling of 
the engine; sweeps through the lakes in steamboats; 
skirts along their shores, round the peaks and crags and 
across the glens, where Eob Eoy and the Campbells 
whistled their clansmen, on a broad, smooth, macadam- 
ized Eoad. He remembers that he is in the old world 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 415 

and lie looks about for something old. Occasionally he 
sees a ruined abbey, or icastle, or enters some ancient 
cathedral. But he is surprised to find so general an as- 
pect of newness, in the objects he sees. Even old 
Chester, sufficiently marked by its antique air, is most 
irreverently disturbed by two or three railroads dig- 
ging into the walls and through the town. London 
shows, indeed, a little patch or two of the old city wall, 
as a curiosity, but, on the whole, it has the air of a fi'esh 
modern city. An immense work of creation is going 
on everywhere, and a young England is rising out of 
the old, fall of power, and visibly stimulated b}^ new 
thoughts. In the diplomatic quarrel that is going on 
with his country, about Oregon, he is compelled to ob- 
serve the dignified aud healthful desire of peace that 
sways the mind of the British people. England is 
doubtless under bonds, in her debt and the immense 
wealth at stake in her commerce, to keep the peace. 
But a very strong Christian feeling against war is also 
gaining strength every year. That insolent prejudice 
against other nations, which is the disagreeable distinc- 
tion of Englishmen, and rises, in part, from their insu- 
lar state, is yielding, at length, to the possibility that 
there may be something right and respectable out of 
England. The common people are moving ; some of 
them have been as far as to London, and many others 
have been out of the town in which they were born, 
and returned with enlarged ideas. And the fact that 
so many Eoads are prepared for their accommodation 
suggests, to many, that they are worth being accommo- 



416 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

dated. In the corn-law struggle, the landed aristocracy, 
it is well understood, lost the last hope of supremacy 
and suffered a conclusive defeat. It is well understood, 
also, that an abatement of the laws of primogeniture 
and entail must ultimately follow, and then, as a conse- 
quence, a new distribution of property, which is the 
greatest social want of the English nation. Meantime, 
the same spirit of humanity, which overthrew slavery, 
is searching after some plan of common education for 
^the people. The barbarous rigors of penal law are dis- 
appearing. Commissioners are raised, every year, to 
inquire into the miseries of the laboring classes and 
laws are passed to improve their comfort. The moun- 
tain loads of scorn and oppression, which have so long 
lain upon them, are beginning to heave. A more en- 
larged, indeed, I may say, a truly enlarged humanity 
and fellow-feeling actuates public men, in the high 
ofl&ces of state. In the great debate on the corn-law 
question, it was a kind of triumph, to an American, to 
observe that every speaker felt it necessary to be on the 
popular side, and that every thing was made, by the 
opposing parties, to hang on showing what was the in- 
terest of the people, the laboring people. Eeligion is a 
greater subject and closer to the English mind than it 
has been for centuries. Old ideas are returning as new, 
and new ideas are starting into life to assault and stran- 
gle the old. On one side, the establishment is yielding 
to apostasy. On the other, its existence, as an estab- 
lishment, is assaulted by a force, which is daily gather- 
ing vigor and assuming a more condensed form of 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 417 

action. The clergy perceive that a change must sooner 
or later come. The government is inquiring, mean- 
time, whether it may not possibly strengthen the estab- 
lishment, by establishing also the Catholic Church of 
Ireland ? but fears to offend the known bio:otrv of its 
two established religions, by the equal recognition of a 
third. Some of the more judicious and pure-minded, 
in the Anglican establishment, are beginning to quest- 
ion whether its spiritual good would not be promoted, 
if it were separated from the state and from all connec- 
tion with state patronage. Others are the more exas- 
perated, the more they see of danger, and spare no act 
of insult or oppression against the dissenters, that will 
sufficiently vent the disturbance they feel. Every 
month repeats some instance of the kind and that adds 
fuel to the fire already kindled. The English mind 
moves slowlv, but the issue, thouo'h distant, is not 
doubtful. The new age must come. The law of truth, 
of equal right, and, above all, of Christian purity, must 
prevail. Or, if it be a question, as some will say, be- 
tween Eoads and Cathedrals, which, in one sense, it 
certainly is, what chance have the dead against the liv- 
ing? 

Arming himself now, with road-books, a convenience 
unknown to Herodotus in his Egyptian travels, and 
another evidence or indication of our Eoad-making 
habit — providing himself with these, which facilitate all 
the purposes of travel, as much as the Eoads do travel 
itself; conducting him to comfort, and opening all the 
gates of knowledge before him, so that he may pass 



418 THE DAY OF KOADS. 

directly to that, which, coming as a stranger, it would 
take weeks or years to discover — the traveler sets off 
for the continent. He lands, we will say, in Belgium — 
at the terminus of a Eailroad, of course. He sees on 
the engine, quite likely, a name which indicates Amer- 
ican manufacture, and, in company with this and other 
Americans, for they are everywhere, he commences his 
journey towards the Ehine. Belgium is the ancient 
Flanders, the mother of English manufactures and com- 
merce, and the cock-pit, in all ages, of the European 
armies. The old towns throw up their cathedrals, at 
short distances, studding the sky, monuments all of an- 
cient commerce ; a commerce which the Eoads, sweep- 
ing by, have come, if possible, to resuscitate — not with- 
out some slight signs of effect. These Eoads, too, 
plough their way across the old battle-grounds, memo- 
rable in history — peace rushing over the fields of w^ar, 
with a glory as much brighter as her victories are no- 
bler. One monument towers above the plain where 
Napoleon bowed, at last, to the fortune of arms; a 
mound of earth two hundred feet or more in height, 
surmounted not by the British but the Belgic lion, 
boasting no victory, but standing to commemorate, in 
silence, the birth-time of peace. New ideas are at work 
in Belgium. The priests are jealous of commerce and 
commerce growls at the priests. The king, I believe, 
does what he can for his people, and the Eoads do 
more. Free sentiments are springing up and signs of 
quickening are visible, though the country is over- 
populated and the masses are greatly depressed by 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 419 

superstition. When the traveler enters the great ca- 
thedral, at Ghent, and looks upon the elegant carved 
group which supports the pulpit — Truth holding her 
open volume to the dazzled eyes of Time, inscribed — 
'^ Awake thou that s'leepest and arise from the dead and 
Christ shall give thee light " — he thinks of the present 
degenerate Belgic race, before whom truth has shut her 
volume and the light of Christ is hid, not without hope 
that they will sometime find a prophecj^, in what their 
fathers left them. At all events, the Eoads are coming, 
and, without doubt, are bringing something of conse- 
quence with them — what that something will be, time 
will show. 

We come upon the Ehine, at Cologne, which is the 
Eome of the North. This old city, which, thirty years 
ago, was crumbling under a doom of decay, is now re- 
viving, as are most of the old cities of Germany, and 
showing signs of creative action. The mind of Ger- 
many, so long active within itself and in the universi- 
ties, has caught the spirit of the age and is turning to 
relieve itself in works of physical improvement, — build- 
ing Eoads, of course — sixty thousand men at work 
building Eoads — from Cologne in the west, to Berlin in 
the east ; from Hamburg and Bremen in the north, to 
Vienna in the south ; also to Frankfort, Dresden, Mu- 
nich, and I know not where beside. In a few years, 
probably less than five, the steam-car will rush from 
the English Channel, through Austria, to Trieste ; and, 
in less than fifty, to St. Petersburg and thence onward, 
through Tartary, to China and the Eastern Ocean ; by 



420 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

whicli time, another will have crossed the Rocky Moun- 
tains to Oregon, opening a line of travel, by which the 
complete circuit of the globe may be made, in less than 
two months. The Black Sea will soon be connected 
with the Baltic, through Moscow and St. Petersburg; 
and the work that is begun will not stop till the vast 
plains of Eussia are spanned throughout wath rails of 
iron, and the whole empire rings under the rushing 
wheels of travel — rings, of course, with new ideas 
equally stirring and powerful. But we return to Ger- 
many. The spirit of thought and inquiry, which per- 
vades the Protestant half of Prussia, is already break- 
ing into the cities and universities of the Catholic por- 
tion, and thousands released from the superstitions of 
Rome, are withdrawing also from their allegiance. A 
still more rapid intercourse, produced by new facilities 
of travel, such as will bring all parts of the kingdom 
into sensible contact with each other, will either require 
a thorough reformation of the German Catholic church, 
or determine its extinction. Meantime, the govern- 
ment, as honest and w^ell-meaning, probably, as any in 
the world, though unaccustomed to the modern popular 
ideas of liberty, is proving its beneficence by a bold at- 
tempt to educate the people. Power is thus accumula- 
ting in them, and, as intelligence increases, so also does 
the free spirit. A constitutional form of government 
must follow, in wdiich the popular will shall, in some 
way, limit the throne. Engaged in political struggles 
and duties on one side, and in physical improvement 
on the other, the German mind will cease, at length, to 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 421 

ferment in theories and become practical. Having 
emptied all the stores of learning, and tried all forms 
of thought, and uttered all the dreams and visions of 
which souls are capable; in a word, having opened 
Eoads into every corner of the kingdoms, both of truth 
and of error, it will begin to settle on some practical 
results, worthy of the magnificent preparations it has 
made. German theology is a great terror to many, and 
it has certainly made strange havoc with the scriptures 
and with all received opinions. But I think I detect a 
law in its eccentricities, by which it is seen, in them all, 
to be moving towards a certain final result — a result, in 
which Christ and the Christian Church have an interest 
as much greater than they had in the cathedrals of the 
former age, as truth is more divine than stone, and her 
temple more magnificent than any that is made with 
hands. Certain it is, that, if any thing can provide a 
menstruum which is able to dissolve the about equal 
bigotry of Protestantism and Eomanism, and bring 
them out into the open field of truth, to search after 
truth in its own evidence, and flow together, at last, 
into the unity of the truth, it is this German activity. 
Having done this, and nothing more, it will have ac- 
complished a good, sufficiently magnificent, to compen- 
sate for all its aberrations ; for, without this, somehow 
accomplished, it is manifest that the Christian Church 
can never make the attainment, or achieve the destin}^ 
for which she hopes. 

Eeturning from this wide excursion, our traveler as- 
scends the Khine — by steam, of course; for the steam- 

36 



422 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

boats are plying on this rapid stream, almost as indus- 
triously as on tlie Hudson. Every bend of the river 
opens a vista of deserted and ruined castles, crowning 
the summits of the mountains and the isolated peaks 
that overhang the river. The poetaster sighs over the 
decay of so much chivalry and grandeur, but the man 
of sense, knowing that these were all so many abodes 
of land pirates and toll-gatherers, who • subsisted on the 
prey of commerce, thanks God that finally a Eoad is 
opened for honest men to pass and do the honest busi- 
ness of their life. The grey old castles, crumbling un- 
der a curse, have a harmless, stupid look, over which 
Time grins in mockery — ^he laughs himself at the sorry 
figure they make. Or, if some of them were built for 
purposes of personal security, in a lawless and violent 
age, regarding them only with reverential pity, as mon- 
uments of the days of Shamgar, he glories not in them, 
but in the new age of law which has at length de- 
scended on the world; knowing that law is now the 
grand castle of man, a castle as much more magnificent, 
as it is more comprehensive ; as much firmer and no- 
bler, as justice and truth are more unassailable and of a 
nature more august than walls of stone. 

Our traveler breaks into Switzerland through the 
city wall of Basle, under the smoke of a locomotive ; 
for what else can open a path through the walls of for- 
tified cities? Here, in Switzerland, he finds also new 
Eoads, the best that can be made, but leaves Railroads, 
for the present, behind him. All the world are travel- 
ing in Switzerland, except the Swiss, and they are 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 423 

beginning to climb over the Alps after loads of Ameri- 
can cotton, whicli they manufacture and carry back to 
the transalpine markets. The Swiss are a fine people ; 
honest, simple-minded republicans — only they do not 
understand what liberty is. They think it is liberty in 
the canton Yaud, to compel Christian ministers to read 
their state proclamations against themselves, and do the 
bidding of the state in all respects. But the ministers 
think otherwise, and having taken their stand, with the 
noble Yinet at their head, incurring silence, suspension, 
want, and even the fear of death, they are some of 
them learning, in their trials, what spiritual religion is 
— which they did not know before. Their persecutors, 
too, who are strangely enough called the radical party,- 
are now rioting against the Jesuits and for their expul- 
sion, which is just as bad in principle. But religion is 
reviving; the Swiss mind is at work; true liberty is 
feeling out its way. For long ages, this little nation of 
republicans lay locked within their mountain fastnesses, 
shut away from -the living world ; but now, the gates 
are open ; the living world has come, and they feel its 
quickening power. The valleys are threaded with fine, 
broad Eoads; the lakes fronted by palaces, built for 
hotels — the only palaces known to the Swiss; Eail- 
roads are projected; and some even think it possible 
that a steam-car may sometime be heard thundering 
through the Alps, and making its appearance in Italy, 
on the other side. 

But, for the present, we must go over and not 
through them. Here, again, we find four stupendous 



424 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

Eoads, all virtually new, climbing over these everlast- 
ing hills ; spanning chasms, plunging through promon- 
tories of rock, skirting gulfs, shedded with stone arches, 
here and there, for the avalanches to slide over ; pass- 
ing, at the summit, between peaks of eternal ice; 
smooth, wide, easy of ascent and descent; northern 
Europe pouring over into southern. Protestantism into 
Popery, and Popery back into Protestantism; new 
ideas and old traveling back and forth, and passing on 
their way : and commerce, with its heavy loaded teams, 
rolling securely over these icy ramparts, in attempting 
which, a Hannibal lost three-fourths of his army. 
Climbing over one of these passes, that, we will say, of 
the Simplon, the traveler is made to feel, possibly, for 
the first time in his life, what is in a Eoad ; how much 
it means, what victories it sigrnifies: what mvrmidons 
of thought, more powerful than armies, are pouring 
over it, daily and nightly, from nation to nation. 
Meditating thus, a strange power rushes upon him, as 
if he had somehow fallen, for once, into the high-road 
of destiny itself Is it that Xapoleon, whom some have 
called the man of destiny, is represented in this work? 
Is it that a force is evervwere displaved, which mocks 
the sternest frowns of nature, and tramps across her 
wildest gulfs of terror? Or, is it, rather, that he pic- 
tures the fierce soldier, storming these icy solitudes, not, 
as he thought, to open a way for his armies, but a way, 
rather, wherein the new future of Italy shall descend 
upon her? Here it is, if never before, that he con- 
ceives the moral import of a Road. 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 425 

He reaches Milan, and first of all he notices, -with a 
smile, that they are here also visibly thinking of mo- 
tion, having torn up the rough, old pavement of their 
streets, to lay down smooth lines of floor, in the tracks 
of the wheels, for easing and expediting their motion. 
Noting this, as a symptom, he is not surprised to see 
that this ancient and many times ruined city, is reviv- 
ing once more. He pursues his way towards Yenice, 
passing the once splendid cities of Bergamo, Brescia, 
Verona, Vincenza, Padua, on a fine, broad, macadam- 
ized Eoad constructed by the Austrian viceroy. The 
signs of improvement are few and sometimes display 
the marks of a people only half awake. On this mag- 
nificent Eoad, for example, the diligence will have, for 
its outfit, a conductor and two postillions, one for each 
span of horses. But the postillions can not agree, 
whether to ride fast or slow ; they stop every mile or 
two ; the hindmost disconnects the horses of the fore- 
most, and he, in turn, wheels into the path, that the 
other may not proceed without him; they threaten and 
storm at each other, and the conductor swears at both, 
and thus the magnificent Eoad comes, at last, in the 
practical result, to a very sorry figure, not at all re- 
lieved by the liveries, which connect the official dignity 
of the government with such an exhibition of mock en- 
terprise. Such, now, is the beginning of life in Aus- 
tria. When Austria is covered with Eailroads, and 
quickened throughout by commerce, when private en- 
terprise has come into powerful action, then will a sin- 
gle man do the work of these three ; and doing it for 

36* 



428 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

the people are growling, with a half stifled voice, for 
something which they can not get. Why this ill- 
nature? What is it they want? Why, they want 
Eoads, and the Holy Father will not consent. And 
why do they want Eoads ? have they not all the Eoads 
they ever had, and these in good order, some of them 
newl}^ paved, for many miles, and almost as nicely as 
the Appian Way itself? Have they not a good new 
Eoad to Naples also? Assuredly something new, 
some dim hope of something better, has got into the 
heads of the people, which mars their content. At 
length, the Holy Father dies and immediately a soft 
smile relaxes their faces. Eegarding him as the very 
representative of God, their mourning over him takes 
on yet an involuntary smile ; — because now they will 
have Eoads ! But Eoads were not all thev wanted, it 
was only safer to speak of Eoads ; they had some Wvant 
of law, personal safety, freer marts of trade, tribunals 
clear of bribery. Well, the new Pope enters on his 
office, and he says, yes, let there be Eoads, Eailroads, 
one to Civita Vecchia, one to Ancona on the other 
shore, one to Florence in the north, one to meet the 
Naples Eoad in the south. He will endeavor, also, to 
do something for education ; he will secularize the tri- 
bunals of law, and the bureaus of state, and take off the 
enormous duties, which had thrown all commerce into 
the hands of smugglers. He may not be able to do all 
this ; for it is already clear that the priests are against 
him and they are legion, both in name and nature. 
But the Eoads will be built, the robbei's will lose their 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 429 

occupation, trade will spring np, tlie Bnglisli travelers, 
who have created, at length, these new wants in the 
people, will pour in more copiously than ever, bringing 
new ideas still, and the very locomotives, rushing into 
the eternal city, and rolling their smoke over St. Pe- 
ter's, will come as new ideas and types of modern 
power. No man could well understand the age of 
Shamgar, without a visit to the Eoman States. It is 
soon to be over. The dark middle age of the Judges 
is coming to an end. Now, most assuredly, comes 
light, education, justice, and with all these, liberty, re- 
ligious and civil liberty. 

We return to France, where our excursion closes. 
France, as you well know, is also building Eoads. She 
had fine Eoads, many of them paved with squared 
stone before; these were not enough to satisfy her 
commercial and manufacturing activity ; for France, if 
I do not mistake, is improving more rapidlj^ than any 
country in Europe. The great estates of the nobles 
and the abbeys were broken up, in the violence of the 
Eevolution and under the reign of Napoleon, so that 
now the landed property of France is well distributed, 
compared with almost any country in Europe. Hope 
dawns on labor, and industry opens a new era in phys- 
ical advancement. Already a Eailroad penetrates the 
old city of Nismes, so mournfully distinguished in the 
history of the Huguenots. Another w^ill shortly con- 
nect Marseilles with Avignon, and the walls of the old 
inquisition, where the noble Eienzi perished a martyr 
to liberty, will shake at the sound of the engine and 



428 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

the people are growling, with a half stifled voice, for 
something which they can not get. Why this ill- 
nature? What is it they want? Why, they want 
Eoacls, and the Holy Father will not consent. And 
why do they want Eoads ? have they not all the Eoads 
they ever had, and these in good order, some of them 
newl}^ paved, for many miles, and almost as nicely as 
the Appian Way itself? Have they not a good new 
Eoad to Naples also? Assuredly something new, 
some dim hope of something better, has got into the 
heads of the people, which mars their content. At 
length, the Holy Father dies and immediately a soft 
smile relaxes their faces. Eegarding him as the very 
representative of God, their mourning over him takes 
on yet an involuntary smile ; — because now they will 
have Eoads ! But Eoads were not all they wanted, it 
was only safer to speak of Eoads ; they had some want 
of law, personal safety, freer marts of trade, tribunals 
clear of bribery. Well, the new Pope enters on his 
office, and he says, yes, let there be Eoads, Eailroads, 
one to Civita Yecchia, one to Ancona on the other 
shore, one to Florence in the north, one to meet the 
Naples Eoad in the south. He will endeavor, also, to 
do something for education ; he will secularize the tri- 
bunals of law, and the bureaus of state, and take off the 
enormous duties, which had thrown all commerce into 
the hands of smugglers. He may not be able to do all 
this ; for it is already clear that the priests are against 
him and they are legion, both in name and nature. 
But the Eoads will be built, the robbers will lose their 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 429 

occupation, trade will spring up, tlie English travelers, 
who have created, at length, these new wants in the 
people, will pour in more copiously than ever, bringing 
new ideas still, and the very locomotives, rushing into 
the eternal city, and rolling their smoke over St. Pe- 
ter's, will come as new ideas and types of modern 
power. No man could well understand the age of 
Shamgar, without a visit to the Eoman States. It is 
soon to be over. The dark middle age of the Judges 
is coming to an end. Now, most assuredly, comes 
light, education, justice, and wdth all these, liberty, re- 
ligious and civil liberty. 

We return to France, where our excursion closes. 
France, as you w^ell know, is also building Eoads. She 
had fine Eoads, many of them paved with squared 
stone before; these were not enough to satisfy her 
commercial and manufacturing activity ; for France, if 
I do not mistake, is improving more rapidly than any 
country in Europe. The great estates of the nobles 
and the abbeys were broken up, in the violence of the 
Eevolution and under the reign of Napoleon, so that 
now the landed property of France is well distributed, 
compared with almost any country in Europe. Hope 
dawns on labor, and industry opens a new era in phys- 
ical advancement. Already a Eailroad penetrates the 
old city of Nismes, so mournfully distinguished in the 
history of the Huguenots. Another will shortly con- 
nect Marseilles with Avignon, and the walls of the old 
inquisition, where the noble Eienzi perished a martyr 
to liberty, will shake at the sound of the engine and 



430 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

the coming of a renovated age. So there are Raih-oads 
spinning out of Paris, in every direction, and enough, 
are already projected to cross nearly every department 
of the nation. France also desires peace ; for she well 
knows the import of war, and though she glories in 
Napoleon, she does not care to risk all her commerce 
and her growing prosperity, for the chance of seeing 
another. Meantime she talks, in her parliament, of a 
more equal and complete Christian liberty. And, 
what is better still, many hearts are beginning to yearn, 
in all parts of the nation, for some better light, some 
more spiritual religion, such as meets the wants of their 
being. Old superstitions are breaking down ; atheism, 
already old, is shaking with decrepitude. Philosophers 
talk of religion with such kind of wisdom as they can ; 
hamlets and villages, here and there, turn upon their 
priests as impostors, and many signs of a great religious 
renovation appear. SujQEicient proof have we here, that 
our age of utility and of Roads is not, of course, losing 
the sense of religion and not likely to end, in the mea- 
ger way, which many predict. 

Most of the facts included in this brief sketch or re- 
view, it is well understood were known to you before. 
But it has not been my object to instruct you in regard 
to facts, so much as to hold them before you, in their 
moral connections, as symbols of the age and of what 
Grod is working, in the age. In proposing a discourse 
on Roads, I did it in the hope that I should thus bo 
able to give you a more distinct apprehension, than in 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 431 

any other way, of j^our age and its ctaracteristics — its 
relation to past ages, its future prospects, and tlie meth- 
ods by which it is reaching after results of use, of com- 
mon beneficence and common humanity. In no other 
way can you understand so well what is going on in 
the world, and what is preparing, and what kind of 
ideas are at work, whether new or old, malignant oi 
hopeful, as simply to note that this is a Eoad-building 
age. The dark age built castles, on the inaccessible 
peaks of mountains, to get away from enemies, we 
build cottages, on public Eoads, which we like to have 
as perfect as possible, to facilitate access and motion. 
The Egyptians built pyramids over the dead, we build 
Eoads to give life and swiftness to the living. The 
Chinese erect a wall to shut themselves in ; we open 
Eoads and ports and span the ocean itself with floating 
bridges, that we may go everywhere and behold the 
coming of all people. 

And what is specially remarkable, this Eoad-building 
movement is the first example, in the history of man- 
kind, where all the great nations of the world have 
moved together, and been actuated by a common aim. 
One has given itself to commerce, another to arms and 
conquest, another to art, another to the sea, another to 
agriculture. Now, all are for commerce, interchange, 
travel and motion together. And, what is yet more 
sublime and hopeful, they all are feeling the pressure 
of the same great moral ideas, peace, liberty, education, 
religious light and unity. The desire of physical im- 
provement holds a natural and philosophic connection 



432 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

with all these great ideas, moral and religious. In our 
physical improvements we seek ends of beneficence 
such as the ease and cheapness of production, the con- 
venience of a market, the facility of intercourse between 
the masses of society, and thus we pass over to think 
of intellectual and moral results, peace, knowledge, lib- 
erty, holy virtue, heavenly unity — our ideal of benefi- 
CEXCE allows no limitation ; it associates every thing 
good, by virtue of its own goodness ; and accordingly, 
it will be found, much as we hear of the sordid spirit 
of this age of utility, that the very, thought which 
moves us, in our universal Road-building, is one that 
can not be satisfied, till every thing included in benefi- 
cence, as an ideal, is fulfilled. 

What is to come? That is a question opening 
visions of future good, which, though we can not 
prophecy, we can not but indulge. 

Undoubtedly a new era of wealth is at hand. Com- 
merce never has failed to bring wealth to any nation, 
and it can enrich all as easily as one. Nay, one the 
more easily, that it is permitted to enrich all. It fol- 
lows, of necessity, that the population of the world will 
be vastly increased. 

Wars, it will also be seen, can not, if they occur, be as 
long as they have been heretofore. Where it is possi- 
ble to transport an army, with all its supplies and mu- 
nitions, a thousand miles in three days, pouring one na- 
tion into the bosom of another, almost at will, it is evi- 
dent that wars must come to their issue, in the fall of 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 433 

one party or the other, in a very short time. This will 
create an indisposition in the nations to engage in ^\'ar. 
The conviction, too, that nations have a natural interest 
in each other and are not natural enemies, as was once 
the current maxim of the world ; the advantages also 
of commerce and the noble triumphs of peace, wiH all 
conspire to create a common opinion, at length, against 
war. The absurdity of war, too, will have been abund- 
antly shown and its disagreement with the great princi- 
ples of Christianity. The appeal to arms, therefore, as 
a means of redress for inj uries, will be classed with the 
old method of trial by combat, and will disappear, we 
may hope, in the same manner. Prophecy will thus 
fulfill her holy vision— the nations will learn war no 
more. 

Another promise will follow in the train; for as 
many run to and fro, knowledge will be increased. I 
am fully sensible, as you know, to the dangers which 
beset an age of travel and motion. Every good brings 
its dangers with it. And did we not see a desire of 
universal education everywhere attending and keeping 
company with the extension of facilities for travel, we 
might w^ell fear, lest so much of running to and fro will 
end in a general destruction of all sober habits ; pro- 
ducing, at last, a state of society, which is made up only 
of surfaces, emptied of every solid principle. But the 
schools, we observe, are spreading, as the Roads are ex- 
tending; and the hope of attaining to a better social 
state is, in fact, the common stimulus of both. The 
goveniments of Christendom are everywhere consenting 

37 



•iS-i THE DAY OF ROADS. 

to the fact, that they exist for the good of all ^ho live 
under them. And this thought, shaping their policy, 
gives them an interest in the masses under them, makes 
them protectors of industry, and prepares them to assist 
and encourage industry, by favoring such a distribution 
of property, as will best effect an object so worthy. 
Having it for their problem, to make every man as 
valuable as possible to himself and to his country, and 
becoming more and more inspired, as we may hope, by 
an aim so lofty, every means will be used to diffuse 
education, to fortify morals, and favor the holy power 
of religion. This being done, there is no longer any 
danger from travel. On the contrary, the masses of 
society will, by this means, be set forward continually 
in character and intelligence. As they run, knowledge 
will be increased. The roads will themselves be 
schools ; for here they will see the great world moving 
and feel themselves to be a part of it. Their narrow, 
local prejudices will be worn off, their superstitions will 
be forgotten. Eveiy people will begin to understand 
and appreciate every other, and a common light will be 
kindled in all bosoms. 

The effects which are to result, in matters of religion, 
from the universal interchange of travel, in our age of 
Eoads, are a subject of yet graver import. Man lives 
for religion. Human society exists for religion. And 
it is remarkable how all the great movements of society, 
for the last fifty years, the wars, diplomacies, and 
even the public wrongs of the world, have tended, uni- 
versally and even visibly, to favor the extension of 



THE DAY OF BOADS. 435 

Christian truth, and invigorate the efforts of Christian 
love. Observing a fact so palpable in all the external 
doings of the nations, who can withhold a suspicion 
that a correspondent aim penetrates the internal work 
of society, and, of course, that our age of Eoads has 
some holy purpose of God fulfilling, in its social revolu- 
tions, which connects with the coming reign of Christ 
on earth? 

Manifestly, freedom of thought and opinion is soon 
to be universal, and this will throw all truth upon the 
decision of evidence. Then, force being no longer em- 
ployed to constrain men's opinions, the false antagonism 
of fear and passion will no longer disturb the balance 
of the Christian mind, as now, and truth will rule by 
her own right, in her own field. Opinions, being de- 
termined only by argument and evidence, will naturally 
approximate. The Christian mind, liberalized by inter- 
course, will suffer a more enlarged charity, and the 
charity of forbearance will be followed by the charity 
of love. The boundaries of nations, spanned by bands 
of iron, crossed and recrossed, many times a day, as 
freely as the birds of the air fly over them and as swiftly, 
will cease at length to be felt. The Eoads of intercourse 
will create vital bonds of unity between nations, and 
a common circulation, like that of the ducts of the 
body, will make the members one, as by a common 
life. 

Meantime, there is an assimilating power in inter- 
course, which can not be over-estimated. So great is 
this power, that every new Road of travel, which expe- 



436 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

dites intercourse between the older and newer portions 
of our country, is to be regarded as a great moral ben- 
efit. Let the North and the South, the East and the 
West, from Maine to Oregon, be connected with Eoads 
of iron, as soon as possible. The greatest danger, 
which threatens us now, is not Eomanism, but barba- 
rism; that wildness, lawlessness and violence, which 
result from distance and isolation. Let distance, if 
possible, be annihilated, let speed have a race with 
emigration, and every straggler of the woods be held in 
close proximity with civilization, law and religion; 
and then the assimilating power, which resides in the 
better forms of societj^, will pervade and shape the 
whole mass into itself. It seems also to be the mag- 
nificent purpose of God, in our age of Eoads, to set 
this same power of mutual assimilation at work, on a 
yet broader scale, and so as to include all the churches 
and nations of Christendom — so that one part may give 
to another what it wants, and every church and nation 
find its complement in every other. A feeling of ap- 
proximation, or a feeling after approximation, is al- 
ready evident. What was it, in fact, but a lively and 
free intercourse, which prompted a desire of union so 
remarkable as that which was manifested by the late 
convocation at London? In that fact, which, twenty 
years ago, was not in the conception of man, you may 
see the first fruits of Eoads. More and greater will ap- 
pear in due time ; for God, I am persuaded, is prepar- 
ing results of vaster compass than have yet appeared. 
In government, we have, as yet, nothing perfect, and 



THE DAY OF ROADS. 437 

yet we have all something good to contribute. 
Thrown together, by perpetual intercourse, and having 
it for our ideal to advance society and man, we shall 
naturally be assimilated most, to that which most com- 
mands our respect; and thus we shall mutually con- 
tribute what we have, and receive what we want. In 
government, for example, England may contribute the 
element of prescriptive order and legal energy ; Prussia, 
that of system and complete, scientific distribution; 
Eome, that of divine authority, by which law becomes 
the ordinance of God — an element which, with us, is 
well-nigh lost; France, that of theoretic law; the 
United States, that of abstract equal right. Thus, all 
contributing and all receiving, all will be enriched. 
Nor let this pass for a mere fanc}^, or an unpractical 
dream. We are receiving from each other, by a silent 
influence, in just this manner, now; only not as con- 
sciously and with as much depth of impression, as we 
may hereafter, when livelier and more extensive inter- 
course has brought us into a closer sympathy, and 
travels and discussions have exhibited the points most 
worthy of respect, in the institutions of all. So in 
religion, the church of England may contribute impres- 
sions favorable to some kind of liturgical order. Ger- 
many may offer scripture learning and all possible 
views of Christian doctrine. Eome may come into the 
assimilating process, to infuse a solemn conviction of 
the need of catholic unity, in the Christian family. 
France, if she returns to religion, may contribute an 
exterior mold of social grace and Christian refinement. 

37^ 



438 THE DAY OF ROADS. 

The United States may pour in the element of spiritual 
simplicity and practical activity. 

God is wiser than we, and carries vaster purposes 
in His bosom, and broader truths, I am persuaded, 
than our childish thoughts have comprehended, or 
conceived. Therefore, doubtless, it would be much 
for us to gain, in this matter of religion, if we could 
yield the possibility that we are none of ns infalli- 
ble, or perfectly wise, in every thing, and suffer the 
hope that He is now pouring the nations together, in 
these last daj^s, that He may assimilate their views and 
fill out the glorious orb of Christian truth and beauty ; 
and thus unite all Christendom, in a common effort 
to fill this world of sin with the light of Emmanuel. 

Such, briefly, are the magnificent hopes that are 
now set before us, in the prospect of the coming ages. 
What forms of social beauty may be realized, what 
structures of art may be raised, what works of genius 
created, by the renovated wealth, intelligence, and 
piety of the world, I will not stop to conceive. 
Enough to know what transcends all such conjectures, 
and rises on the mind as the summit of all grandeur 
and sublimity, that Christ the Lord shall ascend into 
his throne and reign, in the moral majesty of peace 
and righteousness, over the admiring nations. Seeing, 
then, the nations movod, for the first time, by a 
common impulse, and preparing to embrace, in the 
waj^s described, we will not fear to view a fact so 
wonderful, as a forerunner of the Son of Man. AVe 
will reapply the fit words of prophecy, and say — 



THE DAY OF KOADS. 439 

^^ Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths 
straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every 
mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the 
crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways 
shall be made smooth, and — ALL FLESH SHALL see 

THE SALVATION OF GOD.'^ 



XII 

RELIGIOUS MUSIC* 



A QUARTER of a centup}^ since, in the year 1826, at 
whiciL time I was a member of this venerable university, 
the Beethoven Society was organized, having for its ob- 
ject the cultivation of music as an art, but more espe- 
cially of sacred music. It was designed to be perpetual, 
though I am obliged to acknowledge that we had, at the 
time, but a slender faith in its perpetuity. Still it has 
continued for so long a time, maintaining, I believe, a 
general advance in the noble art it was designed to fos- 
ter, till now, at last, having become able to furnish a 
better pledge of its continuance, in the erection of a fine, 
classic-toned organ from one of the best builders in the 
world, it has seemed fit that the occasion of its opening 
should be signalized in some public manner. In this 
view, and I suppose principally because I was connected 
with the society in its origin — certainly not because I 
have any special competence for the task — I have been 
requested to offer a discourse such as I may deem ap- 
propriate to the occasion. Accepting your invitation, I 
derive my subject from — 

* Delivered before the Beethoven Society of Yale College, at the open- 
ing of tlieir new organ, August, 1852. 



RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 441 

1 Cor. 14: 7. ^^A7id even things ivithout life giviny 
soimd^ whether pipe or harp^ except they give a distinction 
in the sounds ^ how shall it be known what is piped or 
harped V 

Every thing for a use and every thing in its place, is 
a rule, the apostle is saying, that holds in spiritual gifts 
and exercises, as in every thing else. If you speak with 
tongues, let it not be as making only strange noises, but 
let some one interpret, that the tongues may edify and 
not be sounds without a meaning. It will not do for 
Christians to be more unmeaning and idle in spiritual 
gifts, than even things without life themselves, the pipes 
and harps and trumpets and drums of music ; for these, 
when they give a sound, give it with distinctions that 
have a meaning and a power, else they are nought to 
us. The war trumpet has so great significance and au- 
thority that, by the sounding of signals, it commands 
the squadrons of armies, right and left, front and rear, 
to advance or to retreat ; but if the trumpet gives an 
uncertain sound or a false signal, if instead of sounding 
the charge it sounds the giving of alms, who shall pre- 
pare himself for battle? Trumpets are not used in this 
way. Are voices and tongues to be less intelligent or 
significant than tubes of unconscious horn or metal ? 

This reference of the apostle to instruments of music, 
you perceive, is a reference simply of illustration ; he is 
discoursing of spiritual gifts, not of music. But he 
touches, in the way of illustration, two points of so great 
religious interest, that I propose, this evening, to make 
them topics of my discourse. They are these, viz., the 



442 KELIGIOUS MUSIC. 

very wonderful fact that God has hidden powers of mitsic 
in things luithout life; and that when they are itsed^ in 
right distinctions^ or proprieties of sounds they discourse 
what ive know — what meets^ interprets and works our feel- 
ing^ as living and spiritual creatures. Of these I shall 
speak in their order, only endeavoring to confine the 
subject, in great part, to its religious import and appli- 
cations. 

This world of outward being has a fixed relation to 
all the five senses of man and especially to the two no- 
bler of these, the senses of sight and of sound ; the 
senses of touch, taste and smell being applicable only to 
small portions of the material world and having as much 
less to do with the spiritual economy of life, as an intel- 
lectual and religious experience. 

The senses of sight and sound are preeminently con- 
versable or social, therefore moral and religious in 
their connections. And then of these two, the sense of 
sight is more especially connected with the understand- 
ing or intellectual power, and the sense of sound with 
the feelings, emotions and affections. God has made 
the world to be a fit medium for both — to use the dri- 
est figure possible, a blackboard for the mind, and a 
sounding-board for the heart. In this manner, it results 
that we have two languages, the language of thought 
and reason formed in words, which are the names prin- 
cipally of visible objects ; and the language of feeling, 
which is made b}^ tones of sound different in time, pitch, 
quality, inflection — in a word, by music; which, for a 



RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 443 

long time, was not a written language, but is now more 
exactly written than the other. In speech, or vocal ut- 
terance, both languages are blended ; words, which are 
mostly based in visible objects and spatial relationships, 
being, when spoken, gifted with additional meanings and 
powers from the qualities and inflections of the voice, 
instinctively toned or modulated by the feeling of those 
who speak ; for it is not the words only of speech that 
have so great power, but quite as much the living notes 
of music in which they are spoken ; notes that vary 
with the quantity and quality — the volume and depth 
and beauty, or the dearth, dullness, hoUowness, coarse- 
ness of feeling in the speaker. Hence, too, the amazing 
difference of power in speakers, who may speak, or 
read, or recite the same words. One does it without 
the true distinction of sounds, the other with ; even as 
our apostle himself observes, apart from any thought of 
becoming a critic or professor of elocntion : '^ There are, 
it may be, so many kinds of voices in .the world and 
none of them is without signification." 

Hence, also, the very great difference you observe 
between the tones of utterance employed in a mere ar- 
gument to the understanding or judgment of men, and 
those which are used, for example, in prayer addressed 
to God. "We think nothing of it probably, but nature 
teaches us to make a distinction of sound imawares. 
Meantime, the musician who is able to catch and write 
down the tones we use in both cases, will show that we 
speak, in the former case, more in full-tone intervals, 
and these coarsely measured ; in the latter, more in half- 



444 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 

tones, and closer to the principle of musical notation. 
Just as we properly should, because we are not dealing 
here with mere notions of the understanding, but offer- 
ing to God sentiments of penitence and love and wor- 
ship. And yet, since preaching is so much a matter of 
address to the feelings or sentiments of our religious na- 
ture, this kind of speaking will have a distinction of 
sound, compared with other forms of public address in 
the senate, or at the bar. And so far has this distinc- 
tion prevailed in the Christian sense of some nations, as 
in Italy, and particularly in Wales, that preaching takes 
the form of a distinct, musical recitative. And on this 
account, it is said, that there is no tongue in the world, 
in which preaching has so great advantages, or exercises 
a power so resistless, as in the Welch ; because it speaks 
in the music of love and sorrow, and fitly interprets, in 
that manner, the divine passion of the cross. 

You perceive, in these suggestions, how closely our 
spiritual nature, as creatures of feeling, is related to the 
element of sound, wanting this in its distinctions for a 
language, as truly as it wants the language of words for 
intellectual discourse> Even as the poets, who are na- 
ture's best oracles, sing : 

'' Music ! how faint, how weak, 
Language fades before thy spell ; 
Why should feeling ever speak, 
When thou canst breathe her soul so well ?'' 

Accordins^lv, as we are wont to ar^ue the invisible 
things of God, even His eternal power and Godhead, 
from the things that are seen, finding them all images 



RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 445 

of thought and vehicles of intelligence, so we have an 
argument for God more impressive, in one view, because 
the matter of it is so deep and mysterious, from the fact 
that a grand, harmonic, soul-interpreting law of music, 
pervades all the objects of the material creation, and 
that things without life, all metals and woods and val- 
leys and mountains and waters, are tempered with dis- 
tinctions of sound, and toned to be a language to the 
feeling of the heart. It is as if God had made the world 
about us to be a grand organ of music, so that our feel- 
ings might have play in it, as our understanding has in 
the light of the sun and the outward colors and forms 
of things. What is called the musical scale, or octave, 
is fixed in the original appointments of sound, just as 
absolutely and definitely as the colors of the rainbow or 
prism in the optical properties and laws of light. And 
the visible objects of the world are not more certainly 
shaped and colored to us, under the exact laws of light 
and the prism, than they are tempered and toned, as 
objects audible, to give distinctions, of sound by their 
vibrations, in the terms of the musical octave. It is not 
simply that we hear the sea roar and the floods clap 
their hands in anthems of joy ; it is not that we hear 
the low winds sigh, or the storms howl dolefully, or the 
ripples break peacefully on the shore, or the waters 
dripping sadly from the rock, or the thunders crashing 
in horrible majesty through the pavements of heaven; 
not only do all the natural sounds we hear come to us 
in tones of music as interpreters of feeling, but there is 
hid in the secret temper and substance of all matter a 

33 



446 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 

silent music, that only waits to sound, and become a 
voice of utterance to the otherwise unutterable feeling 
of our heart — a voice, if we will have it, of love and 
worship to the God of all. 

First, there is a musical scale in the laws of the air it- 
self, exactly answering to the musical sense or law of 
the soul. Next, there is, in all substances, a tempera- 
ment of quality related to both ; so that whatever kind 
of feeling there may be in a soul, war and defiance, fes- 
tivity and joy, sad remembrance, remorse, pity, peni- 
tence, self-denial, love, adoration, may find some fit me- 
dium of sound in which to express itself. And, what 
is not less remarkable, connected with all these forms 
of substances, there are mathematical laws of length and 
breadth, or definite proportions of each, and reflective 
angles, that are every way as exact as those which reg- 
ulate the colors of the prism, the images of the mirror, 
or the telescopic light of astronomic worlds — mathemat- 
ics for the heart as truly as for the head. 

Accordingly, we find, so close is the hidden music of 
substances to the sympathy and feeling of man, that he 
begins, at once, instinctively, to try them by his voice 
and feeling, and learn what distinctions of sound they 
will make. And so instruments of music begin to be 
invented and used, even before the flood ; as early, in- 
deed, as the keeping of herds and cattle and the com- 
forts of the nomadic life are introduced. Jabal is the 
''father'' of these, his brother Jubal of the other; that 
is, *• of the harp and the organ ;'' one a stringed instru- 
ment, and the other, not an orsran in our modern sense 



RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 447 

of the term, but a pandean or shepherd's pipe, the prin- 
ciple of which is the same. From that time to the 
present, the silent music or musical property of things 
without life has been more and more fully opened to dis- 
covery, till at last we find that every known substance, 
wood, shell, horn, glass, copper, iron, steel, brass, silver, 
strings and skins and pasteboard and even India rub- 
ber, wait to be voices of feeling and sing the passions 
of the human spirit. Nay, even the very stones of the 
field have their notes, hid within them, and are ready 
to break out in song. For we hear that the stroke of 
flints upon each other has been actually managed so as 
to make an instrument of music and discourse in strains 
of living melody — suggesting the probable fact that the 
mysterious laws of crystallization have a secret affiance 
with the powers of music, and so with the passions of 
the human heart. 

" There's music in the si'ghing of a reed, 
There's music in the gushing of a rill, 
There's music in all things, if men had ears, 
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres." 

Neither can it be said that all these substances with- 
out life have simply a power to make sounds or aerial 
vibrations, taking advantage of which fact we ourselves 
arrange them so as to make sounds of a given pitch, 
and that so the music they yield is really of man alone. 
For though it be true that a given shape and arrange- 
ment is necessarj^ to the effect, the laws of that arrange- 
ment and of musical rhythm are first established in 
souls and in the air as related to souls, and then, 



MS RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 

besides, all these substances without life are so con- 
structed as to make distinctions of sound as to quality, 
wholly apart from distinctions of pitch, and it is the 
mysterious quality of sounds that makes them inter- 
preters of human feeling, quite as much as their varie- 
ties of pitch. Hence, it is found, that in instruments of 
wood, the different woods have all distinct qualities of 
sound, and that in some of them only a given kind of 
wood, carefully selected, will produce the quality of 
sound most desired in that particular instrument. 
Thus, down to the time of David, the harp had been 
made of the heros\ or cedar wood. But in Solomon's 
time, it was found that the almug or algum wood gave 
a better quality of sound, and all the harps of the choir 
were accordingly made of it. So it is affirmed that the 
Cremona viol has its rank of estimation, as a precious 
instrument, from the singular and musically soul-like 
quality of the wood selected for its construction. It is 
also found that the different woods, in friction upon 
each other, scream in distinct qualities of sound, and a 
key -board instrument has been constructed on this prin 
ciple of friction, that discourses in the woods, by vibra- 
tions that answer to the sentiments of souls. Even as 
that most wonderful organ, the human throat, is gifted 
wdth a power to utter all the feeling of a soul, by dis- 
tinctions of sound, so there is a throat of utterance in 
all created substance, voiced to serve its uses, and pre- 
pared by some mysterious quality of sound, to be its 
interpreter. 

It can not therefore be said that music is a human 



RELiaious MUSIC. 449 

creation, and, as far as the substances of the world are 
concerned, a mere accident. As well can it be said 
that man creates the colors of the prism, and that they 
are not in the properties of the light, because he shapes 
the prism by his own mechanical art. Or if still we 
doubt, if it seems incredible that the soul of music is in 
the heart of all created being, then the laws of harmony 
themselves shall answer, one string vibrating to another, 
when it is not struck itself, and uttering its voice of 
concord simply because the concord is in it and it feels 
the pulses on the air, to which it can not be silent. 
Nay, the solid mountains and their giant masses of rock 
shall answer ; catching, as they will, the bray of horns, 
or the stunning blast of cannon, rolling it across from 
one top to another in re^^erberating pulses, till it falls into 
bars of musical rhythm and chimes and cadences of sil- 
ver melody. I have heard some fine music, as men are 
wont to speak, the play of orchestras, the anthems of 
choirs, the voices of song that moved admiring nations. 
But in the lofty passes of the Alps, I heard a music 
overhead from God's cloudy orchestra, the giant peaks 
of rock and ice, curtained in by the driving mist and 
only dimly visible athwart the sky through its folds, 
such as mocks all sounds our lower worlds of art can 
ever hope to raise. I stood (excuse the simplicity) call- 
ing to them, in the loudest shouts I could raise, even 
till my power was spent, and listening in compulsory 
trance to their reply. I heard them roll it up through 
their cloudy worlds of snow, sifting out the harsh quali- 
ties that were tearing in it as demon screams of sin, 

38- 



450 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 

holding on npon it as if it were a hymn they were 
fining to the ear of th.e great Creator, and sending it 
round and round in long reduplications of sweetness, 
minute after minute, till finally receding and rising, it 
trembled, as it were, among the quick gratulations of 
angels, and fell into the silence of the pure empyrean. 
I had never any conception before of what is meant by 
quality in sound. There was more power upon the 
soul, in one of those simple notes, than I ever expect to 
feel from any tbing called music below, or ever can feel 
till I hear them again in the choirs of the angelic world. 
I had never sucb a sense of purity, or of what a simple 
sound may tell of purity, by its own pure quality ; and 
I could not but say, O my God teacb me this ! Be this 
in me forever ! And I can truly aflS.rm that tbe experi- 
ence of that hour has consciously made me better able 
to think of God ever since — better able to worship. 
All other sounds are gone, the sounds of yesterday, 
heard in the silence of enchanted multitudes, are gone ; 
but that is with, me still and I hope will never cease to 
ring in my spirit, till I go down to the slumber of si- 
lence itself. 

What I here say may probably enough seem extrav- 
agant. That such, a power of music dwells in the rag- 
ged rocks and granite masses of the world may be in- 
conceivable. And yet if this visible creation of matter 
is made for the habitation of souls, made for human 
hearts as well as for human understandings, why should 
not the language of the heart and the rhythm of the 
heart's feeling be in it ? 



RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 451 

I am a little apprehensive that in these illustrations I 
may have seemed to some of you to be so much occu- 
pied with properties of matter, as to be leaving the do- 
main of religion. To such as think it nothing to relig- 
ion that God has made the world for it and hid a lan- 
guage in all fibres, grains and masses of substance, dis- 
coursing of love and pure feeling and adoring joy, it 
doubtless will. But to me there is nothing in any of 
the arguments for God from things visible, that seems 
to prove as much or have as deep a meaning as this 
from things audible. It transforms the. world itself into 
a temple of worship and fills it with voices waiting to 
utter and kindle a celestial love in all that live. 

This conviction, I.think^ will be strengthened as we 
go on to speak of the second topic proposed, viz., of 
those distinctions or properties of sound, by which it 
may be made to serve most effectively the purpose of 
God in its appointment as an instrument of religion. I 
say the purpose of God in its appointment, for we have 
it by a double appointment, that which fills the mate- 
rial creation with it as a residence or temple of religion, 
and that w^hich makes it, by express direction, an ordi- 
nance of worship to men. How carefully this part of 
the worship was ordered in the temple service of Israel, 
is known to every reader of the ancient scriptures; 
how exactly also the choirs of singers and of players on 
instruments were arranged, one to answer to another in 
the deep wail of grief or penitence, the soft response of 
love, the lively sweep of festive gladness, or all to flow 



452 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 

together in choral multitudes of praise, that might even 
shake the rock of Zion itself 

And this divine service of music was ordered by God 
Himself through His own prophet: ^'And he set the 
Levites in the house of God, with cymbals and psalter- 
ies and harps, according to the commandment of David, 
and of Gad, the king's seer, and Nathan the prophet ; 
for so was the commandment of God by His prophets. 
And the Levites and the priests praised the Lord, day 
by day, singing with loud instruments unto the Lord." 

And to this divine ordinance of song it is that David 
calls, when he says, offering to his nation the hymns 
he has written for their anthems of praise : "0 come 
let us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to 
the rock of our salvation." ^Sing unto the Lord with 
a harp and the voice of a psalm. With trumpets and 
sound of cornet, make a joyful noise before the Lord 
the king." Or perhaps you may hear him alone there 
in the temple, weeping out his shame and sorrow, in 
tears of sound, and crying to his harp, ''Have mercy 
upon me, O God! according to thy loving kindness, 
according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot 
out my transgressions." 

And if any one wishes to know what power there 
may be in music, as an instrument of religion, let him 
ask what effect the songs of this one singer have had, 
melted into men's hearts, age after age, by music, and 
made in that manner to be their consecrated and cus- 
tomary expressions of worship. Suppose, instead, he 
had written a treatise of theology and given it to the 



RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 453 

head of mankind ; what tenth part of power would he 
thus have exerted over the race? And you will re- 
member that these compositions of his have their life in 
the principles of music. Without this thej would not 
have been preserved, without this they could not have 
been set as they are in the depths of human feeling, 
and, what is more, they are in fact musical construc- 
tions ; for all poetry is deep in the rhythmic power of 
music. Indeed, you may see as you read these compo- 
sitions, line answering to line, the balancing and re- 
sponding of choirs, and hear their confluence in the 
repetitions of the chorus — nay, you may almost hear 
the ring of the cymbal, the blast of the cornet and the 
wail of the harp. 

Besides, it is a fact that the inspirations of prophets 
and seers, and probably those of David himself, were 
connected as improvisings with religious music. Thus 
Elisha said, bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, 
when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord 
came upon him. So also w^e read that when Saul was 
seized wdth the spirit of prophecy, it was upon meeting 
a school of the prophets coming down a hill with a 
psaltery and a tabret and a pipe and a harp before 
them — -a fact in which we see that prophetic vision it- 
self, in the schools of the prophets, was a state of higher 
consciousness, opened and kindled by the elevations of 
religious music. Nor is this any thing remarkable, if 
we recognize the fact that God has made the substances 
of the world to crystallize and grow under laws of mu- 
sic ; so that strings and tubes of metal and wood and 



454 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 

voices opening in sound, shall speak a panharmonic 
language for whatever feeling struggles in the depths 
of the human bosom. Indeed what human being, I 
maj almost say, though it were better to say, what soul 
not closed against God by a life of sin, could hear the 
24th Psalm properly delivered, in the grand choir of 
the temple service, without beginning to feel himself 
raised above himself, as if some power of prophecy were 
in him? So great, so mysteriously powerful, is the 
sway of music over the soul. TTe see this in things not 
religious. Many a song like the Marseilles Hymn has 
revolutionized an empire, or supported even for ages 
the nationality of a people. And what is it but the 
martial beat of music, acting on the yielding and thin 
element of common air, that lifts every foot of an army 
and rolls it onward with the precision of mechanism 
and the force of destiny through the fiery hail of death ? 
Or, what is it now that gives to a single person, a wo- 
man, greater power of impression over the feeling of 
mankind, power to sway more deeply the sense of 
whole nations, than any living man possesses, whether 
statesman or potentate, however distinguished by talent, 
however absolute in dominion ? It is in facts like these 
that we are to see what swav God desiorns to exert in 
human bosoms, throusrh the medium of this mvsterious 
force, this language of the heart, which he has appointed 
and set in a connection so immediate with our religious 
nature. 

But, in order to the hi eh result intended, the music 
of religion must be religious. There must be a distinc- 



RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 455 

tion of sounds. As this language is given for the heart, 
it becomes a first principle that it must be of the heart, 
else it is an unknown tongue. And so true is this, that 
nothing can really fulfill the idea of religious music, 
which is not the breathing of true love and worship. 
Even instruments without life will not speak the true 
notes of power, unless the touch of faith is on them,) 
and the breath of holy feeling is in them — how much 
less the voice itself, whose very qualities of sound are 
inevitably toned by the secret feeling of the spirit. 

We speak of music as a science, which in one view 
it is. It is science in the arrangement, but in the exe- 
cution more. The imderstanding or head can utter no 
proper music, least of all religious music. The notes 
may be sounded in time and pitch and power, and yet 
the music will not be there. It might as well be im- 
agined that a man can be an eloquent speaker, because 
he has the science of speaking and gesture in his head, 
with all manner of facts, images and arguments at com- 
mand, as that one can pour out the true inspirations of 
worship before God, because he knows the gamut of 
music and the fingering of its instruments. A certain 
counterfeit may be made in this manner, but it will be 
a counterfeit — an uncertain sound that has not the true 
distinctions. You may say, it is well, it is beautiful 
music, but for some reason it will not find j^ou. Never 
will it be the proper language of feeling to the heart, 
till the spirit of adoration is in it. There will be a false 
quality in the sounds, something which says, "this is 
execution," some token of ambition, or affectation, or 



456 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 

eagerness of impression ; the solemnity will be hollow, 
the softness will be flat, the loudness a strain of the 
flesh. By one sign or another, what is done out of 
mere science will reveal its weakness and falsity. The 
true power of worship will be felt only as the true life 
of worship in the heart flows out through all notes and 
movements, and bathes the music in dews of heavenly 
moisture. When the soul is simple and God is templed 
in the inmost recesses of its feeling, then is there a 
quality in the voice and the touch, that reveals and 
communicates the inspired joy of the heart. And this 
is power. Even the most simple inartistic perform- 
ance, full of love to Grod and the unaffected devotion 
of worship, will carry a more profound impression, one 
of higher sublimity, than the highest feats of execution 
and the finest strains of amateur propriety, unkindled 
by the heavenly fire. 

There is great reason to suspect that the ofiice of a 
choir and of choral music is badly conceived in our 
modern assemblies of worship. The true idea of Chris- 
tian music involves what no mere drill or teaching can 
reach ; a choral consciousness, inward elevations, rhyth- 
mic sweeps of feeling, as if the music were using the 
choir and not they performing the music. Poetry can 
as w^ell be written w^ithout inspiration, as any song of 
the heart's faith or feeling sung by the will and the 
written concert of the book. It requires something 
back of the voice, which is higher in qualitj'-, a feeling 
chastened, softened, raised, purified, glorified, and this 
beating as a common pulse, a common inspiration, shall 



RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 467 

I say, in the whole movement. To imagine that music 
of any kind can have its genuine power, without the 
feeling or above the feeling, is absurd. It supposes 
that music may be good as a lie — good as an expression 
when there is nothing to be expressed. Would that 
a choir could once be heard again on. earth, like that of 
the school of the prophets ; a choir that, with all the 
advantages of modern science, and the more perfect in- 
struments of modern invention, could improvise, in its 
feeling, the subject and sentiment of its song; pouring 
out a world's anthem — voices of life and things without 
life giving sound — to Him that made them all and hid 
in their mysterious mold powers of harmony to feel his 
touch and utter his praise. the deep senses of God 
and the soul and the soul's yearnings after God, that 
might be kindled thus and in awful joy expressed — 
kindled also as certainly as' they are expressed, in the 
listening multitudes who hear. 

This, at least, is the true idea of Christian music ; it 
is the music of the Spirit. It is not a something given 
secundem artem^ a touch of this and a flourish of that, or 
an indefinite piping and harping, which no one can tell 
whether it be this or that, but it is the voice of truth, 
love, duty, worship; a discoursing of heaven in the 
language of the heart. It streams into feeling as it 
streams out of feeling, and is to the spirit a holy bap- 
tism of sound. 

We read the singular history of David, when he 
takes his harp to comfort Saul and soothe his maddened 
brain, and perhaps we say it is impossible. But we do 

^ S9 



458 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 

not conceive the truth. It would have been impossible, 
with so much wood and so many strings, if that were 
all, to accomplish any such result. The best overture, 
most artistically played, would have been powerless. 
But David is not here as an amateur player, he is here 
in a consciousness glorified by holy trust, playing forth 
his prayer of feeling, and his love is in the wood and 
the strings, and the spirit of God is sweeping as a gale 
through both him and them. Hence the power. 

In drawing this subject to a conclusion, I can not 
forbear to say a few words in regard to the very inti- 
mate connection of the sense of music and the cultiva- 
tion of that sense with the highest powers of genius and 
literary excellence. The talent of music, though in one 
view not intellectual, is yet in another even the more 
divinely intelligent. The language of the soul's feeling, 
we have seen, is in it, and nothing had ever yet any 
great power over man that was divorced from feeling. 
This divine principle of music breaks into the style of 
every good writer, every powerful speaker, and beats 
in rhythmic life in his periods. Even if he is rough 
and fierce, as he may be and as true genius often is, it 
will yet be the roughness of an inspired movement ; a 
wizard storm of sounds that rage in melody, not the 
dead jolting of cadences that have no inner life back of 
the wind-force that utters them. The talent of music 
is the possibility, in fact, of rhythm, of inspiration, and 
of all poetic life. A man may plod, plot, speculate and 
sneer, who has no fibred harp of music hid in • his 



RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 459 

feeling; he may be a qualified atheist, usurer, dema- 
gogue, dogmatist or hangman ; but he can not be one 
that stirs men's blood divinely, whether in song or in 
speech, and is very little Hke to be much of a Christian. 

" Is there a heart that music can not melt? 
Alas ! how rugged is that heart forlorn. 
Is there who ne'er those mystic transports felt 
Of solitude and melancholy bom ? 
He needs not woo the muse, he is her scorn. 
The sophist robe of cobweb he shall twine, 
Mope o'er the schoolman's peevish page, or mourn 
And delve for life in mammon's dirty mine, 
Sneak with the scoundrel fox, or grunt with glutton swine." 

In these rather violent terms of the poet Beattie we 
have nevertheless a very certain truth, and one that, 
with proper allowance, may be said to hold generally. 
The finest fibre of soul and the highest inspiration of 
feeling can be formed only in some connection, more or 
less intimate, with a musical susceptibility and nurture. 
Hence, it is the more remarkable that our universities 
make so little of music. They labor at the rainbow 
and neglect the deeper mystery of the musical octave. 
They teach the laws of acoustics, but the laws of music, 
as related to what is deepest and finest in the soul's 
feeling, they do not attempt. They investigate the 
crystallization of a salt, but these wondrous and myste- 
rious crystallizations of the air, in the notes of music, 
they commonly pass by ; greatly to the loss, it seems 
to me, of those who are most concerned to receive what 
most pertains to the culture of the imagination and the 
heart. 

But I must not occupy too much time with points 



460 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 

that are separated from the religious interests of my 
subject. Some persons have a very decided prejudice 
against instruments of music, and even fancy that, on 
that account, they are more spiritual and more strictly 
Christian in their views of religion. Such a prejudice 
is greatly hurtful to themselves, because it takes them 
off in a kind of schism from this part of the worship, 
and a share in its benefits. Can they imagine that 
they are borne out in their prejudice by the Scripture? 
Or have they never read the Psalms of David ? What 
instrument was there which he did not bring into the 
temple and command to open its voice unto God? 
Even the trumpets, after a week's battle, must come 
and change their note to an anthem of victory. Imag- 
ine this great singer of Israel and the vast company of 
the Levites hearing, for the first time, in the temple of 
God, a newly invented organ, such as the instrument 
now perfected by modern art, such as the beautiful in- 
strument just now erected for your society. What 
emotions roll over his soul and the souls of his great 
choir of performers. No breath will blow ! No hand 
will strike the strings ! All the instruments and voices 
are dumb! He rises, when the experiment is over, 
and goes forth, saying in himself, ^'I will alter now my 
Psalms, I will say no more of trumpets and cornets, I 
will call no more for psalteries and instruments of ten 
strings. Profane all these and trivial ! But this is the 
instrument of God!" And so, in fact, it now is. The 
grandest of all instruments, it is, as it should be, the in- 
strument of religion. Profane uses can not handle it 



RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 461 

It will not go to the battle, nor the dance, nor the sere- 
nade ; for it is the holy Nazarite and can not leave the 
courts of the Lord. What room is there for a reasona- 
ble prejudice against such an instrument? And if it 
be true, as I have been showing, that God has voiced 
the dead substances of the world to sing his praise, if 
he has made the round earth and all things in it to be 
an organ of sound about us, what should more delight 
us than to bring into concert with our voices an instru- 
ment that is the type of an appointment so sublime ? 
A true Christian feeling, it seems to me, wall ever turn 
thus to things without life giving sound, and hail their 
assistance in the praise of God ; finding half the sub- 
limity of praise, in the concert of the inanimate works 
of the Almighty Creator. It will even cry with David, 
to the fire and the hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind 
fulfilling His word, mountains and all hills, fruitful 
trees and all cedars, to join their voice with his and 
praise the Lord. And what harm will it be if they 
join him in the shape of an organ? 

Let me also suggest, in this connection, the very 
great importance of the cultivation of religious music. 
Every family should be trained in it ; every Sunday or 
common school should have it as one of its exercises. 
The Moravians have it as a kind of ordinance of grace 
for the children ; not without reason, for the powers of 
feeling and imagination, and the sense of spiritual real- 
ities, are developed as much by a training of childhood 
in religious music, as by any other means. We com- 
plain that choirs and organs take the music to them- 

39* 



462 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 

selves, in our churclies, and that nothing is left to the 
people, but to hear their undistinguishable piping, 
which no one else can join, or follow, or interpret. 
This must always be the complaint, till the congrega- 
tions themselves have exercise enough in singing to 
make the performance theirs. As soon as they are 
able to throw in masses of sound that are not barbarous 
but Christian, and have a right enjoyment of their feel- 
ing in it, they will have the tunes and the style of the 
exercise in their own way, not before. Entering, one 
day, the great church of Jesus, in Eome, when all the 
vast area of the pavement was covered with worshipers 
on their knees, chanting in full voice, led by the organ, 
their confession of penitence and praise to God, I was 
impressed, as never before, with the essential sublimity 
of this rite of worship, and I could not but wish that 
our people were trained to a similar exercise. The 
more sorrowful is it that, in our present defect of cul- 
ture, there are so many voices which are more incapa- 
ble of the right distinctions of sound, than things with- 
out life, and which, when they attempt to sing, contrib- 
ute more to the feeling of woe than of praise. 

I can not close without carrying your thoughts for- 
ward, a moment, to the scenes of the future life. It is 
sometimes made a question, how far the felicity of the 
blessed hereafter will consist in this particular exercise 
of worship. I allude not here to the low-minded and 
barbarous sneers of infidels, scoffing at the Christian 
heaven as a paradise of perpetual psalm, but to the se- 
rious doubts of Christian interpreters. It is not to be 



RELIGIOUS Mirsic. 463 

denied, as many of them suggest, tliat our current rep- 
resentations of this subject are derived, in great part, 
if not wholly, from the Apocalypse or book of Eevela- 
tion. Neither can it be denied that the anthems of 
praise heard in heaven by the seer of Patmos, are vis- 
ional anthems, as the beasts and four and twenty elders 
are visional beings — representations above, that herald 
and connect with scenes of history to come on earth. 
And yet they encourage, it seems to me, the common 
impression, even if they do not reveal what is actually 
transacted in the world of the glorified. This, at least, 
we know, that souls are organs still of feeling, and if 
they have great feeling to express, it will be strange if 
they have not the language of feeling too. As to the 
sound that shall be, using the word in our present 
earthly sense, we of course know nothing, more than of 
the body that shall be. And yet there may be and is 
like to be a finer medium of sound, a more spiritual mu- 
sic, which the music of the earth only images or repre- 
sents, just as there is to be a finer organ of body, which 
our grosser body represents. And then, again, what 
have we in the fact that a law of music penetrates and 
fills this whole empire of being, making the known uni- 
verse itself an organ voiced for the expression of the 
heart, but a prophecy given, or a plain inference, that as 
hearts are eternal, so all realms of God to which the 
blessed go, are forever to thrill in ecstacies of sound. 
Besides, what is the joy of the glorified but a joy of so- 
ciety ; that is, of feeling expressed, society in pure and 
great feeling, immediate, spontaneous, universal ; propa- 



464 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. ^-^ <f f 

gated, of course, by some fit medium. By what other, 
unless by voices of feeling whose speech is music, voices 
angelically tempered by the inward love and purity, 
flowing into choirs of harmony and improvised an- 
thems that, as waves of sound, are but the ocean beat 
and swell of bosoms conscious of God. And I heard 
the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of 
many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, 
saying, Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reign- 
eth. Many waters— mighty thunderings — chorus of 
sea and air, deep and wide as both ! in the clearness of 
purity, the fullness of love, the tremendous emphasis 
of righteousness, swearing its Amen to God and his 
judgments. 




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